Polarimetric passive microwave remote sensing of wind vectors with foam‐covered rough ocean surfaces

Abstract

In this paper, polarimetric microwave emissions from wind‐generated foam‐covered ocean surfaces are investigated. The foam is treated as densely packed air bubbles coated with thin seawater coating. The absorption, scattering and extinction coefficients are calculated by Monte Carlo simulations of solutions of Maxwell equations of a collection of coated particles. The effects of boundary roughness of ocean surface are included by using the second‐order small perturbation method (SPM) describing the reflection coefficients between foam and ocean. An empirical wavenumber spectrum is used to represent the small‐scale wind‐generated sea surfaces. The iterative method is employed to solve dense media radiative transfer (DMRT) equations, and is applied to calculate results of all four Stokes parameters of rough ocean surfaces. The theoretical results of four Stokes brightness temperatures with typical parameters of foam in passive remote sensing at 10.8 GHz, 19 GHz and 36.5 GHz are illustrated. The azimuth variations of polarimetric brightness temperature are calculated. Emission with various wind speed and foam layer thickness is studied. The results are also compared with those based on Quasi‐Crystalline Approximation (QCA).