Location
Salt Lake Community College
Start Date
5-9-2005 9:10 AM
Description
SeaWinds on QuikSCAT is a microwave scatterometer designed to measure near surface vector winds over the earth’s oceans. Rain within the field of view of the scatterometer induces errors in the wind estimates. The relatively high spatial variability of rain rate increases the difficulty of compensating for its effects. These complications resultant from the high spatial variability are referred to as the beamfilling problem. A QuikSCAT algorithm for simultaneously retrieving the vector winds and rain rate information was developed by Draper and Long[1]. This paper explores the non-uniform beamfilling effect of rain cells on QuikSCAT wind speed estimates using both the standard (wind only) processing and the simultaneous wind/rain processing.
Non-Uniform Beamfilling Within the Context of QuikSCAT Wind Estimation
Salt Lake Community College
SeaWinds on QuikSCAT is a microwave scatterometer designed to measure near surface vector winds over the earth’s oceans. Rain within the field of view of the scatterometer induces errors in the wind estimates. The relatively high spatial variability of rain rate increases the difficulty of compensating for its effects. These complications resultant from the high spatial variability are referred to as the beamfilling problem. A QuikSCAT algorithm for simultaneously retrieving the vector winds and rain rate information was developed by Draper and Long[1]. This paper explores the non-uniform beamfilling effect of rain cells on QuikSCAT wind speed estimates using both the standard (wind only) processing and the simultaneous wind/rain processing.