Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
Articles 1 - 1 of 1
Full-Text Articles in Engineering
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 …