Scattering and emission from two-scale randomly rough sea surface with foam scatterers

By using an iterative method to solve the vector radiative transfer equation for a layer of discrete scatterers with randomly rough underlying boundary, the bistatic- and back-scattering, thermal emission and brightness temperature can be derived and applied to both active and passive remote sensing of rough sea surfaces with foam scatterers driven by wind. Numerical results for polarised bistatic- and back-scattering coefficients and thermal emissivities are calculated using a newly modified Cox and Munk (1954) probability density function and the Pierson empirical sea spectrum. The functional dependences on wind speed and direction, observation angle, polarisation, frequency and other parameters are discussed. Theoretical results compare well with experimental data in both active and passive remote sensing of the ocean