The European Space Agency's Remote Sensing Satellite (ERS‐1) was launched in July 1991 [Attema and Francis, 1991]. As part of a global program to validate the ocean surface sensors on board ERS‐1, we carried out a joint experiment in November 1991 on the Grand Banks of Newfoundland involving ships, moorings, aircraft, and a land‐based radar. The principal objective was to provide a field validation of ERS‐1 synthetic aperture radar (SAR) [Attema, 1991] measurements of ocean surface structure. Other objectives included the testing of numerical wave prediction models, the validation of both shipborne X‐band and shorebased HF marine wave radars, and an investigation of the relation between sea state and wind stress. The experiment included a large number of independent wave, sea surface, and atmospheric sensors (Table 1).
