Extreme wind conditions in tropical cyclones observed from synthetic aperture radar images

Both atmospheric and oceanic processes play an important role in the dynamics of tropical cyclones. Due to the relatively small amount of in situ data available for extreme events like hurricanes or typhoons remote sensing techniques play an important role in the measurement of the relevant geophysical parameters. In this paper some recent results on SAR observation of extreme wind conditions are summarized. The study is based on the use of ENVISAT ASAR wide swath images. The objective of this study is to investigate the performance of SAR to improve the existing model for the retrieval of information on wind field under extreme wind and wave conditions using information from a parametric Holland type model.