Comparison of derived wind speed from synthetic aperture radar and scatterometer during the ERS tandem phase

• Published in: IEEE transactions on geoscience and remote sensing Vol. 38; no. 2; pp. 1113 - 1121
• Main Authors: Furevik, B.R., Korsbakken, E.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York, NY IEEE 01.03.2000; Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers; The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE)
• Subjects: Applied geophysics; Earth sciences; Earth, ocean, space; Exact sciences and technology; Image retrieval; Internal geophysics; Performance evaluation; Radar measurements; Remote sensing; Satellites; Sea measurements; Spatial resolution; Synthetic aperture radar; Velocity measurement; Wind speed; Greenland Sea; algorithms; synthetic aperture radar; winds; Space remote sensing; Arctic Ocean; spatial variations; velocity; direction; high resolution
• ISSN: 0196-2892; 1558-0644
• DOI: 10.1109/36.841990

A validation of wind retrieval from synthetic aperture radar (SAR) images has been performed by comparing wind speed estimated from European Remote Sensing Satellite (ERS)-2 SAR with ERS-1 wind scatterometer (WSC) measurements, both using the CMOD-IFR2 algorithm. This was made possible by using data from the open ocean and north of 63/spl deg/ of latitude during the tandem phase of the ERS satellites. Here, the WSC and SAR coverage overlapped with a time difference in the data acquisition of only 30 min. The SAR-derived wind speed values from subimages centred around the WSC wind vectors, agreed to within /spl plusmn/2 m/s but underestimated the WSC wind speed values by approximately 0.4 m/s. Studying the spatial variability of the high resolution wind speed values leads the authors to conclude that the SAR wind field seems useful at least down to a spatial resolution of 500 m, provided that external information on the wind direction is available.