Performance analysis of empirical models of sea surface reflectivity based on measured data

Abstract

The empirical models of sea surface reflectivity have many categories and different applicable conditions. In order to solve the problem of how to select the best models in different environments, we make a systematic analysis of the performance of different models based on the measured data of sea surface and the meteorological observation data in the Northwest Pacific. The results show that the accuracy of the empirical models of sea surface reflectivity may be biased when only the sea state is used as the description of sea surface roughness. For low radar grazing angle, NRL and HYB models can obtain better performance. It is recommended to add a fixed offset for NRL model at medium grazing angles. Constant gamma model can get better fit at high radar grazing angle.