A novel method for estimating offshore wind fields using synthetic aperture radar and meteorological model data

Synthetic aperture radar (SAR) provides a promising method for offshore wind field estimation, particularly in the context of important for offshore wind farm development. This paper introduces an iterative maximum aposteriori probability (MAP) method for combining meteorological model output with synthetic aperture radar for offshore wind field estimation. The MAP approach is demonstrated for 40 ENVISAT ASAR scenes collected for 2004-2006 over the UK Irish Sea. Both the CMOD4 and CMOD5 geophysical model functions are implemented and retrievals using MAP and a simpler direction based windspeed algorithm are validated against insitu mast observations. The CMOD5 MAP algorithm in particular shows promising results with an estimates on average within 2 observations.