Status of the Sea Winds Scatterometer on QuikScat

The QuikScat satellite carrying the Sea Winds Scatterometer was developed as a replacement mission for the aborted Japanese Advanced Earth Observation System-I (ADEOS-I) mission carrying the NASA Scatterometer. Like NSCAT, Sea Winds is an active microwave remote sensor designed to measure winds over the ocean from space. SeaWinds can measure vector (speed and direction) winds over 95% of the Earth's ice-free oceans every day, a significant improvement over previous scatterometers. Such data is expected to have a significant impact on weather forecasting and will support air-sea interaction studies. SeaWinds will also fly aboard theADEOS-II sensor scheduled for launch in Nov. 2000. QuikScat was successfully launched on June 19, 1999, though as of this writing the instrument has not been turned on. This paper provides a brief overview of the SeaWinds instrument and discusses new applications of scatterometer data for the study of land and ice.