Rain effects on the hurricane observations over the ocean by C-band Synthetic Aperture Radar

Abstract

A composite radar scattering model composed of the atmosphere radiative transfer model, and the ocean surface Bragg wave theory is developed to analyze the impact of hurricane rain on the normalized radar-backscatter cross section (NRCS) measured in the VV and cross-polarized C-band Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) channels. The model results are validated against SAR and SFMR measured wind speeds and rain rates for two hurricane cases. The contribution of rain to the NRCS is backscatter from two parts: The atmosphere column and the ocean surface. In the atmosphere, microwave attenuation and the rain-induced volume backscattering are simulated by the model. We find that the impact of raindrops in the atmosphere is almost negligible for the VV polarization, but important for the cross polarization. On the ocean surface, comparisons between our model and other existing models without rain lead to the conclusion that the VV polarization NRCS can be simulated reasonably well without considering the non-Bragg scattering mechanisms. Similar to the wave breaking mechanism, the microwave diffraction on the craters, crowns, and stalks, produced by rain drops, is also negligible for VV polarization. However, the non-Bragg scattering is important for the cross-polarized NRCS simulations. Finally, we performed simulations to understand the VV-polarized NRCS behavior under different wind speeds at various rain rates.