Assessment of the azimuth wavelength cut-off dependence on the ocean state and on the surface wind speed for Sentinel-1 SAR images

Abstract

The empirical dependence of the azimuth wavelength cut-off on the significant wave height and on the wind speed have been studied. The azimuth cut-off is estimated on the fitting of a Gaussian function to the azimuth autocorrelation function of the radar cross section. The feasibility of estimating the significant wave height and/or the wind speed has been investigated as well. We use SAR images acquired by the European Sentinel 1 from the beginning of November 2014 to the end of April 2015 co-located with the scatterometer winds acquired by the Chinese sensor HSCAT and the significant wave height from ECMWF forecasts. The correlation between the azimuth cut-off and the significant wave height is rather strong. A linear geophysical model function is fitted in order to estimate it. The dependence on the wind speed is secondary and becomes remarkable only when the sea state is fully developed. A significant wave height retrieval exercise is proposed and the results are compared with the buoy measurements of the National Data Buoy Center (NDBC) network