Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Sea Surface Roughness Observed By High Resolution Radar, Atsushi G. Fujimura, Susanne Lehner, Alexander Soloviev, Xiaofeng Li

Marine & Environmental Sciences Faculty Articles

Changes in the sea surface roughness are usually associated with a change in the sea surface wind field. This interaction has been exploited to measure the sea surface wind speed by scatterometry. A number of features on the sea surface associated with changes in roughness can be observed by synthetic aperture radar (SAR) because of the change in Bragg backscatter of the radar signal by damping of the resonant ocean capillary waves. With various radar frequencies, resolutions, and modes of polarization, sea surface features have been analyzed in numerous campaigns, bringing various datasets together, thus allowing for new insights in …