Numerical simulation of low-grazing-angle ocean microwave backscatter and its relation to sea spikes

This paper presents the results of numerically simulating microwave backscatter from a deep-water breaking wave profile. Enhanced microwave backscatter from the crests of breaking waves has been hypothesized as the source of bright short-lived microwave radar echoes that are observed at low-grazing angles (LGAs). The characteristics of these "sea spikes" are distinctly different from the Bragg-scatter echoes that dominate measurements made at moderate grazing angles. Of particular interest is the high contrast that sea spikes present against ocean background backscatter when observed with horizontally polarized transmit/receive configurations [horizontal (HH) versus vertical (VV)]. This HH/VV contrast disparity has been attributed to polarization-selective cancellation of the direct reflection from the wave crest by the surface reflection. This hypothesis is reinforced first by showing evidence that VV polarization is suppressed in the intensity range that would normally be populated by the brightest scatterers. Histograms of unaveraged Doppler-centroid measurements show further that the depleted VV backscatter population is responding to scatterers that are moving much more slowly than the HH scatterers. The Doppler-centroid histograms provide a sharper delination between the two scattering populations than do the unconditionally averaged Doppler spectra that are more commonly reported. Finally, our numerical simulations show evidence of an interference mechanism that selectively suppresses VV backscatter. In our simulations, the polarization selectivity comes from the phase dependence of the backscatter from the wave crest. A Brewster phenomenon at the surface reflection point is not necessary.