Open AccessOn polarimetric characteristics in SAR images of mesoscale cellular convection in the marine atmospheric boundary layer
Author(s) -
Li Haiyan,
Perrie William,
Guo Lanli,
Zhang Biao
Publication year - 2011
Publication title -
journal of geophysical research: oceans
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.67
H-Index - 298
eISSN - 2156-2202
pISSN - 0148-0227
DOI - 10.1029/2010jc006738
Subject(s) - mesoscale meteorology , polarimetry , geology , synthetic aperture radar , remote sensing , radar , planetary boundary layer , buoy , radar imaging , convection , meteorology , climatology , physics , optics , computer science , scattering , oceanography , turbulence , telecommunications
Convection is an important phenomenon in the marine atmospheric boundary layer (MABL). Previous spaceborne radar studies of such have been limited to single polarization data, and therefore their focus was on the variation in intensity of the radar return, which was constrained by the existence of a single polarization image pattern, representing different atmospheric and oceanic phenomena. In this paper, we study the polarimetric characteristics of mesoscale cellular convection (MCC) in the MABL using high‐resolution data from fully polarimetric (HH, VV, HV, and VH) RADARSAT‐2 (RS‐2) synthetic aperture radar (SAR) images, in conjunction with closely collocated mesoscale atmospheric model simulations, to identify the MCC signatures. To compare the polarimetric characteristics of MCC with those of the ocean surface, our analysis also includes 641 open ocean surface quad‐polarization RS‐2 SAR images collocated with 52 National Data Buoy Center buoys. The open ocean surface SAR images exhibit different polarimetric characteristics from those of MCC. Thus, we differentiate MCC from other open ocean phenomena, based on identifiable polarimetric SAR characteristics.