Articles | Volume 12, issue 7
https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-12-3573-2019
https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-12-3573-2019
Research article
 | 
04 Jul 2019
Research article |  | 04 Jul 2019

A generalized simulation capability for rotating- beam scatterometers

Zhen Li, Ad Stoffelen, and Anton Verhoef

Data sets

SeaWinds L2 25 km winds data record release 1 - QuikSCAT, EUMETSAT SAF on Ocean and Sea Ice OSI SAF https://doi.org/10.15770/EUM_SAF_OSI_0002

Download
Short summary
This paper presents a generic simulation rotating-beam scatterometer scheme, which includes pencil-beam and fan-beam instruments. SCAT (CFOSAT), WindRAD, and SeaWinds are chosen to represent the current or near-future rotating-beam scatterometers. Their capacity for wind retrieval and figures of merit are analyzed and compared with each other. Increasing the number of views is able to improve the wind retrieval, but the improvement also can reach saturation with even more views.