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ISSN 2070-7401 (Print), ISSN 2411-0280 (Online)
Sovremennye problemy distantsionnogo zondirovaniya Zemli iz kosmosa
CURRENT PROBLEMS IN REMOTE SENSING OF THE EARTH FROM SPACE

  

Sovremennye problemy distantsionnogo zondirovaniya Zemli iz kosmosa, 2026, V. 23, No. 1, pp. 76-86

A semi-empirical model of microwave scattering by water surface under hurricane conditions

G.A. Baydakov 1 , N.S. Rusakov 1 , Yu.I. Troitskaya 1 
1 Institute of Applied Physics RAS, Nizhny Novgorod, Russia
Accepted: 08.12.2025
DOI: 10.21046/2070-7401-2026-23-1-76-86
The paper presents the results of laboratory experiments in which the water surface normalized radar cross section (NRCS) was measured in a cross-pol X-band mode with a wavelength of 3.2 cm under conditions of regular wave breaking. The dynamic wind speed, the spectrum of surface waves, and the fraction of the water surface covered by long-wave crest breaking were selected as characteristics of the wind-wave regime. It was found that in the absence of wind ripples, the power of scattered signal is proportional to the normalized number of breaking events. To determine scattering by open water surface areas, the ripple NRCS was estimated using the SSA-2 numerical model. A composite geophysical model function (GMF) was proposed that relates the cross-pol NRCS to dynamic wind speed, determined by the incoherent summation of signals scattered by breaking areas and the portion of the water surface free of breaking. It was shown that the proposed dependence exhibits significant sensitivity to surface wind speed, specifically due to the component determined by breaking events. To validate the proposed GMF, its predicted values were compared with the results of processing satellite data obtained under hurricane conditions using standard algorithms. Good agreement demonstrates the possibility of using the proposed GMF to develop an algorithm for estimating wind speed from microwave scattering data at cross-polarization.
Keywords: microwave scattering, NRCS, wave breaking, cross-pol, laboratory modeling, remote sensing, geophysical model function
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