The Dependance of Radar Backscatter from Dominant Wavelength Water Waves

University of Utah

Radar backscatter characteristics of sea surfaces depend on many difficult to describe parameters. These parameters include wind speed, incidence angle of the scatterometer, wind direction, frequency used, height of the instrument above the water, footprint size, and the underlying tilt of the waves themselves among others. An ultrawideband scatterometer named YSCAT94 gathered six months of data while deployed at the Canada Center for Inland Waters (CCIW) research platform in Lake Ontario. The backscatter distributions for small footprint scatterometers like YSCAT94 depend on the dominant wavelength of the sea. This paper gives a brief overview of the YSCAT94 instrument and then details the probability model which relates dominant wave slope to backscatter returns. The method used to calculate the dominant wave slope from YSCAT94 data is then presented followed by a conclusion and future directions.