Removing the impact of wind direction on remote sensing of sea surface salinity

Using the small-slope approximation model of microwave emission of rough sea surface, the impacts of sea surface wind on brightness temperature variations generated by the surface roughness, i.e. ΔT h,v, are investigated. Here ΔT denotes the brightness temperature variation, and “h” and “v” denote the horizontal and vertical polarizations respectively. ΔT h,v has a linear relation with wind speed, sea surface temperature (SST) and sea surface salinity (SSS) respectively. Further more, the impact of wind direction on SSS retrieval, under small incidence angles, can be removed by calculating (ΔT h+ΔT v). These characteristics provide simple new ways to develop an SSS retrieval algorithm without wind direction factor.