Ultra high resolution wind retrieval for SeaWinds

The SeaWinds series of scatterometer instruments were designed to measure vector winds over the ocean at a nominal resolution of 25 km. However, the radar backscatter measurements from which the wind is inferred are made at finer resolution than this. Further, the spatial sampling of the backscatter measurements can support reconstruction of finer scale backscatter values which can then be used to estimate the near-surface wind vector field at high resolution (pixel spacing of 2.5 km). At this resolution, the data can be used to study coastal and mesoscale wind features such as tropical cyclones and convective storms. In this paper we use simulation and actual data to validate the accuracy of the retrieved winds and analyze the effective resolution of the wind estimates. An empirical technique to compensate for the estimate bias is developed and applied and an improved method for ambiguity selection is developed. Comparison of the derived vector winds with a variety of other wind sensors is very encouraging.