An updated analysis of the ocean surface wind direction signal in passive microwave brightness temperatures

Abstract

We analyze the wind direction signal for vertically (v) and horizontally (h) polarized microwave radiation at 37 GHz, 19 GHz, and 11 GHz; and an Earth incidence angle of 53/spl deg/. We use brightness temperatures from SSM/I and TMI and wind vectors from buoys and the QUIKSCAT scatterometer. The wind vectors are space and time collocated with the radiometer measurements. Water vapor, cloud water and sea surface temperature are obtained from independent measurements and are uncorrelated with the wind direction. We find a wind direction signal that is noticeably smaller at low and moderate wind speeds than a previous analysis had indicated. We attribute the discrepancy to errors in the atmospheric parameters that were present in the data set of the earlier study. We show that the polarization combination 2v-h is almost insensitive to atmospheric changes and agrees with the earlier results. The strength of our new signals agrees well with JPL aircraft radiometer measurements. It is significantly smaller than the prediction of the two-scale sea surface emission model for low and intermediate wind speeds.