Testing New Parameters for Wind Complexity Assessment From ASCAT Measurements

Spaceborne scatterometers provide accurate measurements of wind fields over the sea. This letter proposes a methodology to take advantage of the revisit time and high resolution in the wind fields retrieved from Advanced Scatterometer (ASCAT)-A and ASCAT-B measurements to assess complexity in their short-term evolution and in their instantaneous spatial pattern. The achievement of this information is fundamental for a complete characterization of wind complexity in a region, being also fundamental to determine the influence of geographical elements in local wind patterns. Results show that the proposed approach is able to provide additional and novel information regarding other wind complexity characterizations based on the steadiness, vorticity, or relative wind speed variability.