Ocean surface winds

Ocean surface winds covers 10 m wind speed and, where retrieval supports it, vector wind direction over regional to global ocean areas, with SAR used for local high-resolution scenes. The observed signals include wind-roughened radar backscatter, microwave brightness temperature, GNSS-R reflections, and altimeter sigma0 proxies, producing swath or gridded wind fields for near-real-time operations and daily or reprocessed records.^[1][2][3]

Scatterometer products support broad-swath vector wind retrieval from ocean radar backscatter, while passive microwave radiometry supports all-weather wind-speed retrieval at coarser resolution and without direct vector direction.^[1][2][4] SAR wind retrieval provides high-resolution coastal and storm-scale wind fields, with direction inputs and sensitivity to rain, slicks, and sea state noted as caveats.^[5][6] GNSS reflectometry supplies mission-dependent ocean wind-speed sampling, including cyclone-focused use cases, and radar-altimeter sigma0 can support sparse along-track wind-speed estimates rather than full vector wind maps.^[3][7]