Determination of wind speed, wind direction and atmospheric structure using ERS-1 SAR data during NORCSEX'91

A method is proposed for extracting high-resolution surface wind speed and direction using the ERS-1 synthetic aperture radar imagery. The radar pixel intensities must be converted and calibrated into radar cross section. In addition, two-dimensional image structure directly related to the wind direction is required. The wind direction is needed to increase the accuracy of the wind speed estimates. The wind speed algorithm error is estimated at about /spl plusmn/1.5 to 2 m/s if the cross sectional variation with wind direction is ignored.>