Algorithm for Sea Surface Wind Retrieval From TerraSAR-X and TanDEM-X Data

Abstract

A geophysical model function (GMF), which is denoted by XMOD2, is developed to retrieve sea surface wind field from X-band TerraSAR-X/TanDEM-X (TS-X/TD-X) data. In contrast to the previously developed XMOD1, XMOD2 consists of a nonlinear GMF, and thus, it depicts the difference between upwind and downwind of the sea surface backscatter in X-band synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imagery. By exploiting 371 collocations with <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">in situ</i> buoy measurements that are used as the tuning data set together with analysis wind model results, the retrieved TS-X/TD-X sea surface wind speed using XMOD2 shows a close agreement with buoy measurements with a bias of <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="TeX">$-$</tex-math></inline-formula> 0.32 m/s, a root-mean-square error (RMSE) of 1.44 m/s, and a scatter index (SI) of 16.0%. Further validation using an independent data set of 52 cases shows a bias of <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="TeX">$-$</tex-math></inline-formula> 0.17 m/s, an RMSE of 1.48 m/s, and an SI of 17.0% comparing with buoy measurements. To apply XMOD2 to TS-X/TD-X data acquired at HH polarization, we validate three X-band SAR polarization ratio models that were tuned using TS-X dual-polarization data by comparing the retrieved sea surface wind speed with buoy measurements.