Space based techniques for remote sensing of oceanic winds : A Review

Abstract

Observations  of surface winds over the global oceans  at regular intervals from space platforms  have been demonstrated.  This paper focuses on  different techniques  developed over the past few decades. The most  successful wind sensor has been the microwave scatterometer, which can provide vector winds with reasonable accuracy.  With the launch of METOP-1, scheduled in  2005,  scatterometer  will be  part of  routine  satellite system for   weather forecast.  Among the research efforts has been retrieval of winds from Synthetic Aperture Radar data,  available in high spatial   resolution and  in both open oceans and  coastal waters.  Radiometric,  altimetric and optical  wind measuring techniques are also reviewed  in the paper.