Title
Sea Surface Wind Retrieval Using the Combined Scatterometer and Altimeter Backscatter Measurements of the HY-2B Satellite
Abstract
Sea surface winds derived from the spaceborne rotating pencil-beam scatterometers, such as the current Chinese Haiyang-2 (HY-2) scatterometers and the Indian SCATSAT-1 scatterometer, are used in a wide range of atmospheric and oceanic applications. One key problem of the pencil-beam scatterometers is the relatively low wind quality in the nadir region, due to the poor azimuth diversity of the nadir-track observations. This article proposes to include the altimeter backscatter measurements in the wind inversion to improve the retrieved wind quality in the nadir region of HY-2B scatterometer (HSCAT). First, empirical model functions are developed to relate the C- and Ku-band altimeter backscatters to the neutral surface winds at 10-m height. Subsequently, the maximum likelihood estimator, which is commonly used to perform wind inversion for satellite scatterometers, is adapted to retrieve winds with simultaneous scatterometer and altimeter measurements. The significance of altimeter measurements in the combined wind inversion is addressed by comparing the cost functions of the combined scatterometer/altimeter wind retrieval and the nominal scatterometer inversion. The experimental results are eventually validated using moored buoy winds and the European Centre for Medium-range Weather Forecasting (ECMWF) model winds, indicating that the inclusion of altimeter backscatters has a positive impact on the wind quality over the HSCAT nadir region. Finally, the potential approaches to further improve the combined scatterometer and altimeter wind inversion are summarized.
Year
DOI
Venue
2022
10.1109/TGRS.2021.3065663
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON GEOSCIENCE AND REMOTE SENSING
Keywords
DocType
Volume
Spaceborne radar, Radar measurements, Wind, Backscatter, Sea measurements, Sea surface, Wind speed, Altimeter, cost function, quality, scatterometer, sea surface winds
Journal
60
ISSN
Citations 
PageRank 
0196-2892
0
0.34
References 
Authors
0
6
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Xiuzhong Li101.35
Wenming Lin202.03
Baochang Liu300.68
Zhixiong Wang401.35
Biao Zhang59723.66
Yijun He602.37