Sea Surface Ka-Band Doppler Measurements: Analysis and Model Development

Type Article
Date 2019-04
Language English
Author(s) Yurovsky Yury1, 2, Kudryavtsev Vladimir1, 2, Grodsky Semyon3, Chapron BertrandORCID4
Affiliation(s) 1 : Remote Sensing Department, Marine Hydrophysical Institute of RAS, 2 Kapitanskaya St., 299011 Sevastopol, Russia
2 : Satellite Oceanography Laboratory, Russian State Hydrometeorological University, 98 Malookhtinskiy Pr., 195196 St-Petersburg, Russia
3 : Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Science, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20740, USA
4 : Spatial and Physical Oceanography Laboratory, Institut Français de Recherche pour l’Exploitation de la Mer, 29280 Plouzané, France
Source Remote Sensing (2072-4292) (MDPI AG), 2019-04 , Vol. 11 , N. 7 , P. 839 (24p.)
DOI 10.3390/rs11070839
WOS© Times Cited 39
Keyword(s) radar, scatterometer, ocean, backscatter, Doppler shift, Doppler centroid, sea surface current, wind drift, modulation, transfer function, empirical model
Abstract

Multi-year field measurements of sea surface Ka-band dual-co-polarized (vertical transmit–receive polarization (VV) and horizontal transmit–receive polarization (HH)) radar Doppler characteristics from an oceanographic platform in the Black Sea are presented. The Doppler centroid (DC) estimated using the first moment of 5 min averaged spectrum, corrected for measured sea surface current, ranges between 0 and ≈1 m/s for incidence angles increasing from 0 to 70∘ . Besides the known wind-to-radar azimuth dependence, the DC can also depend on wind-to-dominant wave direction. For co-aligned wind and waves, a negative crosswind DC residual is found, ≈−0.1 m/s, at ≈20 ∘ incidence angle, becoming negligible at ≈ 60 ∘ , and raising to, ≈+0.5 m/s, at 70∘ . For our observations, with a rather constant dominant wave length, the DC is almost wind independent. Yet, results confirm that, besides surface currents, the DC encodes an expected wave-induced contribution. To help the interpretation, a two-scale model (KaDOP) is proposed to fit the observed DC, based on the radar modulation transfer function (MTF) previously developed for the same data set. Assuming universal spectral shape of energy containing sea surface waves, the wave-induced DC contribution is then expressed as a function of MTF, significant wave height, and wave peak frequency. The resulting KaDOP agrees well with independent DC data, except for swell-dominated cases. The swell impact is estimated using the KaDOP with a modified empirical MTF

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