Coastal wind field retrievals from ERS synthetic aperture radar images

A unique series of European Remote Sensing Satellite (ERS) 1 and 2 C band synthetic aperture radar (SAR) images was obtained off the southern coast of Norway during the Coast Watch'95 experiment in September 1995. In this paper we carry out a systematic analysis of the mesoscale coastal wind field conditions expressed in the SAR images. Four different categories of phenomena including windrows, fetch-limited seas, wind fronts, and oceanographic fronts are examined and discussed. The quantitative retrievals of the wind field are based on examination of both the SAR image backscatter characteristics and the spectral properties. Results are compared and validated against coincident ship and buoy data, providing complementary and independent observations of the oceanographic and meteorological conditions.