Sea surface temperature estimate using active/passive microwave remote sensing: outdoor experiment and model comparison

An outdoor experiment was conducted to investigate the relationship between the active and passive microwave observations from the wave-perturbed water surface. C- and X-band scatterometers are combined with C-band radiometer to make collocated observations of the water surface in a 5.5 metre diameter pool. Air flow over the surface was produced by an array of fans and environmental conditions were measured, including air and water surface temperature, surface roughness, surface wind velocity, etc. Preliminary results show a strong correlation of the rise of both C- and X-band backscatter with the rise of brightness temperature as the air flow speed increased. These results agree that a combined active/passive microwave approach can be used to produce more accurate estimates of sea surface temperature.