An automatic method for tropical cyclone center determination from SAR

In this work, an automatic method is proposed to determine the center of tropical cyclones (TCs) from a series of RADARSAT-1 synthetic aperture radar (SAR) images, which captured TCs over the Atlantic, the Pacific and the Indian Ocean during the years from 2001 to 2007. The TC centers determined by the method are compared to the TC best track (BT) datasets provided by National Hurricane Center (NHC) of National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and Shanghai Typhoon Institute (STI) of the China Meteorological Administration (CMA). The results show a good agreement between the SAR-estimated TC center positions and the BT data, indicating that satellite SAR is a powerful tool for the study of tropical cyclone morphology and dynamics.