Remote Sensing of Tropical Cyclones by Spaceborne Synthetic Aperture Radar: Past, present, and future

Spaceborne synthetic aperture radar (SAR) is a unique microwave satellite sensor used to monitor tropical cyclones (TCs) with high-resolution and large coverage under all weather conditions. This article provides a comprehensive review of the research progress in the field of TC remote sensing by SAR over the last two decades. The representative advances focus on various observations of fine-scale oceanic and atmospheric features, retrieval of surface wind fields, and estimation of TC intensity, structure, and movement parameters. The challenges associated with rain interference on the radar backscatter measurements and the resulting impacts on high wind retrievals are also addressed. We also present perspectives on future development trends. For example, these include the utilization of multifrequency and multipolarization SAR observations and artificial intelligence (AI) techniques to accurately obtain TC intensity, size, and movement information and the monitoring of TC dynamic processes using SAR constellations as well as the improvement of TC simulation and prediction accuracy based on the assimilation of surface wind fields derived from multimission satellites.