Improvements to estimating the air-sea gas transfer velocity by using dual-frequency, altimeter backscatter
Air-sea gas exchange is affected by sea surface roughness and a previous study shows a significant relation between Ku-band backscattering from satellite altimeters and field estimates of gas transfer velocity, K. Recently C-band backscatter data were made available for altimeters on board the JASON-1 and JASON-2 satellites. In this paper we used experimental data from the same cruises to show that using the difference between the Ku-band and C-band signals to estimate sea surface roughness, and thus reducing the contribution from longer waves, improved the K estimates. This is consistent with the theory that gas transfer is largely controlled by short capillary-gravity waves. For satellite data closer than 2 hr and 0.5 degrees from the K sample stations, the dual-frequency parameterization is found to perform better than a wind speed parameterization that uses in situ wind speed. The improvement supports the hypothesis that gas transfer is more directly related to surface roughness than to surface wind.
Goddijn-Murphy Lonneke, Woolf David, Chapron Bertrand, Queffeulou Pierre (2013). Improvements to estimating the air-sea gas transfer velocity by using dual-frequency, altimeter backscatter. Remote Sensing Of Environment. 139. 1-5. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rse.2013.07.026, https://archimer.ifremer.fr/doc/00174/28564/