| Volumes and Issues Contents of Issue 1 |
www.atmos-chem-phys-discuss.net/8/2771/2008/
© Author(s) 2008. This work is distributed
under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.
Sea surface wind speed estimation from space-based lidar measurements
1Climate Science Branch, NASA Langley Research Center, Hampton, VA, USA
2Dept. of Physics and Enginerring, Stevens Institute of Tech., Hoboken, NJ ,USA
3Université Pierre et Marie Curie, Service d'Aeronomie/IPSL, Paris, France
4Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp., Boulder, CO, USA
5The Key Laboratory of Ocean Remote Sensing, Ocean University of China, Qingdao, China
6Dept. of Atmospheric Sciences, Texas A. & M. University, College Station Commerce Street,TX, USA
Abstract. Global satellite observations of lidar backscatter measurements acquired by the Cloud-Aerosol Lidar and Infrared Pathfinder Satellite Observation (CALIPSO) mission and collocated sea surface wind speed data from the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer for the Earth Observing System (AMSR-E), are used to investigate the relation between wind driven wave slope variance and sea surface wind speed. The new slope variance – wind speed relation established from this study is similar to the linear relation from Cox-Munk (1954) and the log-linear relation from Wu (1972, 1990) for wind speed larger than 7 m/s and 13.3 m/s, respectively. For wind speed less than 7 m/s, the slope variance is proportional to the square root of the wind speed, assuming a two dimensional isotropic Gaussian wave slope distribution. This slope variance – wind speed relation becomes linear if a one dimensional Gaussian wave slope distribution is assumed. Contributions from whitecaps and subsurface backscattering are effectively removed by using 532 nm lidar depolarization measurements. This new slope variance – wind speed relation is used to derive sea surface wind speed from CALIPSO single shot lidar measurements (70 m spot size), after correcting for atmospheric attenuation. The CALIPSO wind speed result agrees with the collocated AMSR-E wind speed, with 1.2 m/s rms error.
Discussion Paper (PDF, 1220 KB) Interactive Discussion (Closed, 10 Comments) Final Revised Paper (ACP)
Citation: Hu, Y., Stamnes, K., Vaughan, M., Pelon, J., Weimer, C., Wu, D., Cisewski, M., Sun, W., Yang, P., Lin, B., Omar, A., Flittner, D., Hostetler, C., Trepte, C., Winker, D., Gibson, G., and Santa-Maria, M.: Sea surface wind speed estimation from space-based lidar measurements, Atmos. Chem. Phys. Discuss., 8, 2771-2793, 2008. Bibtex EndNote Reference Manager
