Foam emissivity models for microwave observations of oceans from space

Adequate accounting for the effect of the sea foam in forward models has the potential to improve the accuracy of satellite-based geophysical retrievals of environmental variables from passive radiometric measurements at frequencies from 1 to 100 GHz. Sea foam has a specific mechanical structure which gradually changes within the foam depth. Due to this vertical stratification, the foam characteristics acquire a wide range of values. To model the foam vertical stratification, it is necessary to use a vertical profile for the foam void fraction and to consider scattering between densely packed bubbles. In this study we evaluate two models which address the specifics of a vertically structured foam layer comprising densely packed bubbles in different ways.