{
  "abstract": "Open-ocean in situ winds are sparse, limiting the calibration and validation of satellite wind products. We evaluate wind-vector retrieval from MELODI (Miniaturized Electronics Lagrangian Oceanographic DrIfter), a compact freely drifting GNSS/IMU wave buoy. Wind speed is inferred from the shape of the measured wave acceleration spectrum. A regularized regression with a gated nonlinear correction (Wind Inversion using Tikhonov Regularization, WITR), trained on scatterometer winds and evaluated by leave-one-buoy-out cross-validation against ASCAT MetOp-B/C and HY-2B/C, gives a root-mean-square difference (RMSD) of 0.91 m/s. Symbolic regression distills the trained model into compact spectrum-only and motion-enhanced equations suitable for onboard use; the reduced drag law gives 0.93-0.94 m/s. Wind direction is estimated, without any fitted reference-wind regression, from IMU-derived directional wave moments in the 0.60-0.90 Hz wind-sea band, with a circular mean absolute angular difference (MAAD) of 9.4 degrees against ASCAT. These differences are comparable to published scatterometer-moored-buoy comparisons and improve substantially on the traditional single-band Toba inversion. Validation is strongest from 4 to 14 m/s and sparse above approximately 16 m/s; stronger winds are assigned low confidence. The results show that small wave-sensing drifters, calibrated to the well-established scatterometer wind scale, can provide useful wind-vector observations for validating satellite wind products and for atmospheric and wave modeling; stronger-wind sampling remains a priority.",
  "abstract_shown": true,
  "affiliations": [],
  "article_type": null,
  "arxiv": "2606.14520",
  "author_total": 1,
  "authors": [
    {
      "name": "Alexey S. Mironov"
    }
  ],
  "bibtex": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/0n1pe47k6165c.bib",
  "cited_by": 0,
  "doi": "10.48550/arxiv.2606.14520",
  "fulltext_url": null,
  "id": "0n1pe47k6165c",
  "issns": [],
  "landing_url": "https://arxiv.org/abs/2606.14520",
  "language": null,
  "licence": "LicenseRef-arXiv-nonexclusive-1.0",
  "licence_label": "arXiv licence",
  "licence_source": "article",
  "licence_url": "http://arxiv.org/licenses/nonexclusive-distrib/1.0/",
  "metadata_licence": "CC0-1.0",
  "native_subjects": [
    [
      "arxiv",
      "physics.ao-ph"
    ],
    [
      "openalex",
      "1910|Ocean Waves and Remote Sensing"
    ]
  ],
  "openalex": "W7164848369",
  "pdf_url": "https://arxiv.org/pdf/2606.14520",
  "pmcid": null,
  "pmid": null,
  "published": "2026-10-29",
  "publisher": null,
  "ris": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/0n1pe47k6165c.ris",
  "sources": [
    {
      "first_seen": "2026-10-30T12:36:28Z",
      "native_id": "2606.14520",
      "source": "arxiv",
      "url": "https://arxiv.org/abs/2606.14520"
    }
  ],
  "subjects": [
    {
      "field": "earth",
      "origin": "arxiv:physics.ao-ph",
      "subfield": "atmospheric"
    }
  ],
  "title": "Wind vector retrieval from miniaturized wave-enabled sea-surface drifters",
  "title_text": "Wind vector retrieval from miniaturized wave-enabled sea-surface drifters",
  "type": "preprint",
  "updated_at": "2026-11-01T12:20:47Z",
  "url": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/0n1pe47k6165c",
  "venue": "arXiv",
  "versions": []
}