Effect of precipitation on the wind retrieval from synthetic aperture radar

Abstract

As one of the most powerful air-sea interactions in the weather system, a typhoon usually accompanies with a wide range of heavy rainfall. Due to the influence of rainfall on the radar signal, the inversion precision of sea surface wind field from space-borne radar declines. In this paper, based on C band scatterometer rain effect model and Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) rainfall backscattering model, rain-induced attenuation, raindrop volumetric scattering and rough sea surface scattering are calculated. Performance of these two models are further demonstrated by comparing RADARSAT-2 data with synchronous National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) reanalysis data and Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission satellite (TRMM) precipitation radar (PR) rainfall data, and results prove that they both can improve the rain-induced inaccurate wind field retrieval.