Theoretical modeling of dual-frequency scatterometer response: improving ocean wind and rainfall effects

Ocean surface wind is a key parameter of the Earth’s climate system. Occurring at the interface between the ocean and the atmosphere, ocean winds modulate fluxes of heat, moisture and gas exchanges. They reflect the lower branch of the atmospheric circulation and represent a major driver of the ocean circulation. Studying the long-term trends and variability of the ocean surface winds is of key importance in our effort to understand the Earth’s climate system and the causes of its changes. More than three decades of surface wind data are available from spaceborne scatterometer/radiometer missions and there is an ongoing effort to inter-calibrate all these measurements with the aim of building a complete and continuous picture of the ocean wind variability. Currently, spaceborne scatterometer wind retrievals are obtained by inversion algorithms of empirical Geophysical Model Functions (GMFs), which represent the relationship between ocean surface backscattering coefficient and the wind parameters. However, by being measurement-dependent, the GMFs are sensor-specific and, in addition, they may be not properly defined in all weather conditions. This may reduce the accuracy of the wind retrievals in presence of rain and it may also lead to inconsistencies amongst winds retrieved by different sensors. Theoretical models of ocean backscatter have the big potential of providing a more general and understandable relation between the measured microwave backscatter and the surface wind field than empirical models. Therefore, the goal of our research is to understand and address the limitations of the theoretical modeling, in order to propose a new strategy towards the definition of a unified theoretical model able to account for the effects of both wind and rain. In this work, it is described our approach to improve the theoretical modeling of the ocean response, starting from the Ku-band (13.4 GHz) frequency and then broadening the analysis at C-band (5.3 GHz) frequency. This research has revealed the need for new understanding of the frequency-dependent modeling of the surface backscatter in response to the wind-forced surface wave spectrum. Moreover, our ocean wave spectrum modification introduced to include the influences of the surface rain, allows the interpretation/investigation of the scatterometer observations in terms not only of the surface winds but also of the surface rain, defining an additional step needed to improve the wind retrievals algorithms as well as the possibility to jointly estimate wind and rain from scatterometer observations

Spontaneous polarization of composite fermions in the n=1n=1 Landau level of graphene

Motivated by recent experiments that reveal expansive fractional quantum Hall states in the $n=1$ graphene Landau level and suggest a nontrivial role of the spin degree of freedom [Amet {\em et al.}, Nat. Commun. {\bf 6}, 5838 (2014)], we perform accurate quantitative study of the the competition between fractional quantum Hall states with different spin polarizations. We find that the fractional quantum Hall effect is well described in terms of composite fermions, but the spin physics is qualitatively different from that in the $n=0$ Landau level. In particular, for the states at filling factors $n/(2n\pm 1)$, both exact diagonalization and the composite fermion theory show that the ground state is fully spin polarized and supports a robust spin wave mode even in the limit of vanishing Zeeman coupling. Thus, even though composite fermions are formed, a mean field description that treats them as weakly interacting particles breaks down, and the exchange interaction between them is strong enough to cause a qualitative change in the behavior by inducing full spin polarization. We also verify that the fully spin polarized composite fermion Fermi sea has lower energy than the paired Pfaffian state at the relevant half fillings in the $n=1$ graphene Landau level, indicating a lack of fractional quantum Hall effect at half filling in the $n=1$ graphene Landau level

Insights on the OAFlux ocean surface vector wind analysis merged from scatterometers and passive microwave radiometers (1987 onward)

Author Posting. © American Geophysical Union, 2014. This article is posted here by permission of American Geophysical Union for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Journal of Geophysical Research: Oceans 119 (2014): 5244–5269, doi:10.1002/2013JC009648.A high-resolution global daily analysis of ocean surface vector winds (1987 onward) was developed by the Objectively Analyzed air-sea Fluxes (OAFlux) project. This study addressed the issues related to the development of the time series through objective synthesis of 12 satellite sensors (two scatterometers and 10 passive microwave radiometers) using a least-variance linear statistical estimation. The issues include the rationale that supports the multisensor synthesis, the methodology and strategy that were developed, the challenges that were encountered, and the comparison of the synthesized daily mean fields with reference to scatterometers and atmospheric reanalyses. The synthesis was established on the bases that the low and moderate winds (<15 m s−1) constitute 98% of global daily wind fields, and they are the range of winds that are retrieved with best quality and consistency by both scatterometers and radiometers. Yet, challenges are presented in situations of synoptic weather systems due mainly to three factors: (i) the lack of radiometer retrievals in rain conditions, (ii) the inability to fill in the data voids caused by eliminating rain-flagged QuikSCAT wind vector cells, and (iii) the persistent differences between QuikSCAT and ASCAT high winds. The study showed that the daily mean surface winds can be confidently constructed from merging scatterometers with radiometers over the global oceans, except for the regions influenced by synoptic weather storms. The uncertainties in present scatterometer and radiometer observations under high winds and rain conditions lead to uncertainties in the synthesized synoptic structures.The project is sponsored by the NASA Ocean Vector Wind Science Team (OVWST) activities under grant NNA10AO86G.2015-02-1

Space-borne application of GNSS reflectometry for global sea state monitoring

This research focuses on modelling the relationship between wind conditions, sea roughness and GNSS reflections received from Low Earth Orbit (LEO). The motivation for this study lies in the recent development of a GNSS reflections receiver platform for the UK-DMC satellite and the numerous advantages proposed GNSS Reflectometry can provide in Earth Observation and global disaster monitoring. The fIrst part of the thesis focuses on the simulation procedure of received GPS-R Delay-Doppler Map (DDM). Airborne GPS-R scatterometric model has been adapted into this space-borne application research. Aft~r deriving DDM simulations according to reflection scenario, the results of two-dimensional data-model fItting are presented and analysed. The sensitivity discussion of current GPS-R model suggests some limitations of the modelling method, especially under medium and high wind speed ranges. In the second part, we investigate the inversion scheme of DDMs for the purpose of extracting a statistical wave model empirically. The similar model structure of DDM simulation is used but the processing order is turned over. After deconvolution, DDMs are inversed back to spatial energy maps and spatial slope probability maps. Three inversion algorithms are developed and compared. Preliminary synthetic and real data experiments give evidence of the feasibility of the inversion methodology. Finally, in the third part of this research, a new geometric wave slope statistical model is discussed in the context of wave fIeld simulations. The sensitivity of obtained statistical model is discussed in terms of wind speed, wave direction and observing incident angle. This provides an alternative view point to look into the wave slope probability properties and compensate the traditional theoretic and empirical wave modelling methods. Key words: GNSS-Reflectometry, Delay-Doppler Map inversion, wind conditions, sea surface roughness, slope probability density function, statistical wave slope model.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo

Full-range sea surface spectrum in nonfully developed state for scattering calculations

A new form for the spectrum of the ocean surface vertical displacements is derived for the case of nonfully developed slates. The gravity range is expressed as a function of the fetch x and the significant slope as well. The capillary-gravity range is assumed dependent on the wind friction velocity only. Recent wavenumber spectrum measurements in this spectral domain and ocean conditions are analyzed. Toba's spectral shape is shown to represent correctly these experimental data when updated with an equivalent amplitude factor. An expression for this factor is proposed. It is weakly wind friction velocity dependent, as observed by Mitsuyasu in the late 1970's, The proposed spectrum is then combined with a boundary perturbation model for electromagnetic scattering computations. Empirical scattering models and radar data collocated with assumed ground-truth data are used for comparison. This is shown to give consistent results for both C and Ku bands as well as large ranges of wind speeds and incidence angles. Comparisons of backscattering coefficients computed using other sea spectra from the literature are presented. The significant slope is found to be an important factor for scattering at low incidence angles, The proposed spectrum thus constitutes a useful basis for physically based inversion algorithms