Comparison of modeled and observed microwave emissivities of water surfaces in the presence of breaking waves and foam

Wind speed has been retrieved reliably from SSM/I microwave radiometric measurements since 1990 with a precision of better than 2 m/s. However, operational requirements of the National Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System (NPOESS) dictate retrieval of the ocean surface wind vector, i.e. both speed and direction. This requires improved understanding and forward modeling of the physical processes governing ocean surface microwave emissivity. Although the microwave brightness temperature over the ocean exhibits a relatively strong dependence on wind speed, the dependence on wind direction with respect to the azimuthal angle of observation is at most a few Kelvin peak-to-peak. Although it is known that breaking waves and foam significantly affect the microwave emission of the ocean surface at 6.8, 10.8, 19 and 37 GHz, the effect of foam on the azimuthal dependence of sea surface emissivity is not well understood. This understanding is critical to improve forward models to achieve the accuracy required for ocean surface wind vector retrievals. Recently, electromagnetic modeling of the emissivity of foam generated by breaking waves has been improved by considering the vertical and horizontal heterogeneity of thick layers of foam at the ocean atmosphere interface [1]. In this work, we compare foam emissivities both calculated using this model with those inferred from microwave brightness temperature measurements performed during the Polarimetric Observations of the Emissivity of Whitecaps EXperiment (POEWEX’04).