Assessment of satellite and ground-based estimates of surface currents

Estimation of surface currents still presents a challenge. In this work validates surface current estimates from the Maximum Cross Correlation (MCC) method, that uses spaceborne radiometer data, against ground-based retrievals from a High Frequency (HF) radar system. Moreover, these datasets have been compared with surface current data from two assimilated satellite products and four weather prediction models. The comparison shows large differences in the spatial resolution and the location of specific features. It is concluded that the variation of the observations may be due to the difference between the measuring or estimated method used in each case and the forces driving them.