Print Email Facebook Twitter DopSCAT Title DopSCAT: A mission concept for simultaneous measurements of marine winds and surface currents Author Fois, F. (TU Delft Atmospheric Remote Sensing; European Space Agency (ESA)) Hoogeboom, P. (TU Delft Atmospheric Remote Sensing) le Chevalier, F. (TU Delft Microwave Sensing, Signals & Systems) Stoffelen, Ad (Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute (KNMI)) Mouche, A. (Institut Francais de Recherche pour l’Exploitation de la Mer) Date 2015 Abstract A radar scatterometer operates by transmitting a pulse of microwave energy toward the ocean’s surface and measuring the normalized (per-unit-surface) radar backscatter coefficient (r8). The primary application of scatterometry is the measurement of near-surface ocean winds. By combining r 8 measurements from different azimuth angles, the 10 m vector wind can be determined through a Geophys- ical Model Function (GMF), which relates wind and backscatter. This paper proposes a mission concept for the measurement of both oceanic winds and surface currents, which makes full use of earlier C-band radar remote sensing experience. For the determination of ocean currents, in particular, the novel idea of using two chirps of opposite slope is introduced. The fundamental processing steps required to retrieve surface currents are given together with their associated accuracies. A detailed description of the mission proposal and comparisons between real and retrieved surface currents are presented. The proposed ocean Doppler scatterometer can be used to generate global surface ocean current maps with accuracies better than 0.2 m/s at a spatial resolution better than 25 km (i.e., 12.5 km spatial sampling) on a daily basis. These maps will allow gaining some insights on the upper ocean mesoscale dynamics. The work lies at a frontier, given that the present inability to measure ocean currents from space in a consistent and synoptic manner repre- sents one of the greatest weaknesses in ocean remote sensing. To reference this document use: http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:a9847749-89a9-48ae-b468-39664a1da6eb DOI https://doi.org/10.1002/2015JC011011 ISSN 2169-9275 Source Journal Of Geophysical Research-Oceans, 120, 7857-7879 Part of collection Institutional Repository Document type journal article Rights © 2015 F. Fois, P. Hoogeboom, F. le Chevalier, Ad Stoffelen, A. Mouche Files PDF Fois_et_al_2015_Journal_o ... Oceans.pdf 3.6 MB Close viewer /islandora/object/uuid:a9847749-89a9-48ae-b468-39664a1da6eb/datastream/OBJ/view