Engineering Commons^™

Calibration Of Spaceborne Scatterometers Using Tropical Rain Forests, David G. Long, Gary B. Skouson

Faculty Publications

Wind scatterometers are radar systems designed specifically to measure the normalized radar backscatter coefficient (O) of the ocean's surface in order to determine the near-surface wind vector. Postlaunch calibration of a wind scatterometer can be performed with an extended-area natural target such as the Amazon tropical rain forest. Rain forests exhibit a remarkably high degree of homogeneity in their radar response over a very large area though some spatial and temporal variability exist. The authors present a simple technique for calibrating scatterometer data using tropical rain forests, Using a polynomial model for the rolloff of O with incidence angle, the …