A Study on Geophysical Model Function Modeling with Water Surface Temperature as One of the Input Parameters

Geophysical model function is the basis for the wind vector retrieval with scatterometer and a number of models have been developed to operationally retrieve the ocean surface wind in the past three decades. However, none of the operational models ever took the water surface temperature into account in its modeling, which is considered to have some effect on the ocean backscattering, and in turn on the model accuracy. Taking Sea Winds as an example, this paper attempts to develop new geophysical model functions with surface temperature to be taken into account by using its level 2A data and corresponding buoy data. For contrast, two independent models are established for the ocean water and fresh water respectively. The modeling results and analysis indicate that some effect of the surface temperature on backscatter were found for both types of water, but with a larger extent of the temperature effect for fresh water.