Ocean Surface Current Airborne Radar (OSCAR): a new instrument to measure ocean surface dynamics at the sub-mesoscale

Oceans form Space V Symposium, 24-28 october 2022, Venice, Italy.-- 2 pages, 3 figuresThe ocean interacts with the atmosphere, land and ice on multiple spatial scales including fine submesoscales that are often observed in high resolution optical images. Little is known about their dynamics however. SeaSTAR is an innovative satellite mission concept that proposes to address this gap by mapping ocean current and wind vectors at 1 km resolution. In this paper, we present the OSCAR instrument - an airborne demonstrator of the SeaSTAR concept - and the first results from a scientific campaign over the Iroise Sea in May 2022. The capabilities of OSCAR are demonstrated against ground truth data with very promising first results. These results open the door to using OSCAR as a scientific tool to provide unique 2D synoptic views of ocean and atmosphere dynamics at km-scalesThis work was supported by ESA/ESTEC Contract Number 4000116410/16/NL/BJ for the OSCAR development and ESA/ESTEC contract number 400017623/22/NL/IA for the campaign over Iroise SeaPeer reviewe