Journal ArticleDOI
Sea State Impacts on Wind Speed Retrievals From C-Band Radars
TLDR
Analysis of data from advanced scatterometer (ASCAT) aboard MetOp-A and the advanced synthetic aperture radar (ASAR) aboard Envisat against the in situ buoy wind speeds finds that the sea state dominates the wind speed errors and these trends increase with the significant wave height.Abstract:
Scatterometers, a proven technology, provide ocean wind speeds and directions that are essential in operational forecasts, monitoring of the climate, and scientific applications. While the missions and geophysical model functions are performing well, challenges remain. We analyze data from advanced scatterometer (ASCAT) aboard MetOp-A and the advanced synthetic aperture radar (ASAR) aboard Envisat, both of which operate in the C-band, against the in situ buoy wind speeds. We observe large variability in the wind speed residuals. Through analysis of these residuals, we find that they are related to sea state effects and atmospheric stability. The sea state dependence created by low-frequency swells is more pronounced for the lower incidence angles in ASCAT. In ASAR with a fixed angle of $23^{\circ }$ , the sea state dominates the wind speed errors and these trends increase with the significant wave height. We observe that wind speeds from ASAR and ASCAT have a close resemblance, which helps us to extrapolate our findings. The synergy between the two technologies can be further exploited to improve wind speed retrievals. Future scatterometer missions, such as the next MetOp, will operate with the wider range of incidence angles (including lower angles) to increase their coverage together, have higher spatial resolution, and obtain measurements closer to the coasts. In these cases, high-resolution SAR data can aide in the understanding of the radar response.read more
Citations
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Journal ArticleDOI
A novel synthetic aperture radar scattering model for sea surface with breaking waves
Journal ArticleDOI
Retrieval of the Characteristic Size of Raindrops for Wind Sensing Based on Dual-Polarization Radar
TL;DR: In this article, the authors tried to establish a relationship between the background wind velocity and the raindrops' velocity by introducing a definition of the raindrop characteristic size, which is related to the velocity characterized by the strongest Doppler spectral component.
References
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