A study of a new retrieval algorithm for measurement of oceanic windvectors field using satellite microwave scatterometer

The Seasat-A satellite scatterometer(SASS) demonstrated very successfully that scatterometers can make accurate synoptic measurements of surface wind vectors field over the ocean.The technology is based on the sensitivity of microwave radar back scatter to the ocean waves in centimeter scale created by the action of the surface wind.Moreover, the back scatter is anisotropic, therefore, wind speed and direction can be derived from radar measurements at two or snore different azimuths.Owing to the nonlinear nature of scatter model function and the existence of various noise sources in the measurements, the retrieval wind results consist of as many as four wind directions.A new algorithm is proposed to recover ocean wind field from the SASS normalized cross-section measurement in this paper.Comparison with those estimated from the SASS surface wind analysed by Peteherych et al.(1984) and other references show agreement largely in the wind direction and more exactly in the wind speed.