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Improved Resolution Backscatter Measurements With The Seawinds Pencil-Beam Scatterometer, David G. Long, Michael W. Spencer, Chialin T. Wu
Improved Resolution Backscatter Measurements With The Seawinds Pencil-Beam Scatterometer, David G. Long, Michael W. Spencer, Chialin T. Wu
Faculty Publications
The SeaWinds scatterometer was launched on the NASA QuikSCAT spacecraft in June 1999 and is planned for the Japanese ADEOS-II mission in 2000. In addition to generating a global Ku-band backscatter data set useful for a variety of climate studies, these flights will provide ocean-surface wind estimates for use in operational weather forecasting. SeaWinds employs a compact "pencil-beam" design rather than the "fan-beam" approach previously used with SASS on Seasat, NSCAT on ADEOS-I, and the AMI scatterometer on ERS-1, 2. As originally envisioned and reported, the resolution of the SeaWinds backscatter measurements were to be antenna-beamwidth limited. In order to …
Postlaunch Sensor Verification And Calibration Of The Nasa Scatterometer, David G. Long, Wu-Yang Tsai, James E. Graf, Carroll Winn, James N. Huddleston, R. Scott Dunbar, Michael H. Freilich, Frank J. Wentz, W. Linwood Jones
Postlaunch Sensor Verification And Calibration Of The Nasa Scatterometer, David G. Long, Wu-Yang Tsai, James E. Graf, Carroll Winn, James N. Huddleston, R. Scott Dunbar, Michael H. Freilich, Frank J. Wentz, W. Linwood Jones
Faculty Publications
Scatterometer instruments are active microwave sensors that transmit a series of microwave pulses and measure the returned echo power to determine the normalized radar backscattering cross section (sigma-0) of the ocean surface from which the speed and direction of near-surface ocean winds are derived. The NASA Scatterometer (NSCAT) was launched on board the ADEOS spacecraft in August 1996 and returned ten months of high-quality data before the failure of the ADEOS spacecraft terminated the data stream in June 1997. The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of the NSCAT instrument and sigma-0 computation and to describe the …
Tradeoffs In The Design Of A Spaceborne Scanning Pencil Beam Scatterometer: Application To Seawinds, David G. Long, Chialin T. Wu, Michael W. Spencer
Tradeoffs In The Design Of A Spaceborne Scanning Pencil Beam Scatterometer: Application To Seawinds, David G. Long, Chialin T. Wu, Michael W. Spencer
Faculty Publications
SeaWinds is a spaceborne wind scatterometer to be flown on the second Japanese Advanced Earth Observing Satellite (ADEOS-II) in 1999. An important international element of NASA's Earth Observing System (EOS), SeaWinds is an advanced follow-on to the NASA scatterometer (NSCAT) on the first ADEOS platform. Unlike previous operational spaceborne scatterometer systems. SeaWinds employs a scanning "pencil-beam" antenna rather than a "fan-beam" antenna, making the instrument more compact and yielding greater ocean coverage. The goals of this paper are twofold. First, the overall SeaWinds functional design and backscatter measurement approach are described, and the relative advantages of the pencil-beam technique are …
Spaceborne Radar Measurement Of Wind Velocity Over The Ocean-An Overview Of The Nscat Scatterometer System, David G. Long, F. M. Naderi, Michael H. Freilich
Spaceborne Radar Measurement Of Wind Velocity Over The Ocean-An Overview Of The Nscat Scatterometer System, David G. Long, F. M. Naderi, Michael H. Freilich
Faculty Publications
Scatterometry and scatterometer design issues are reviewed. The design of the NASA Scatterometer (NSCAT) to be flown on the Japanese ADEOS mission is presented. Building on Seasat experience, the NSCAT system includes several enhancements, such as three antenna azimuths in each of two swaths, and an onboard digital Doppler processor to allow backscatter measurements to be colocated everywhere within the orbit. These enhancements will greatly increase the quality of the NSCAT wind data. The ground processing of data is discussed, and scatterometers of the next decade are briefly described.