MONITORING OF THE SOUTH- AND EAST CHINA SEAS WITH ENVISAT ASAR

摘要

The South- and East China Seas have been monitoredrnfrom May 2005 to December 2007 using primarilyrnSynthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) imagery from EnvisatrnASAR. A system has been set up to automaticallyrndownload, process and display SAR imagery andrnderived high resolution wind speed maps. The automaticrncollection of large amounts of scenes permittedrngeneration of high resolution wind speed climatologiesrnbased on SAR. Oceanic internal waves is the mostrncommonly observed feature on SAR images from thernSouth China Sea. The signature of these waves isrnstudied in this paper using a numerical model ("radarrnimaging model") to simulate the radar return signalrnfrom the ocean surface. The model is able to nicelyrnreproduce both qualitatively and quantitatively thernobserved SAR signal. An example of ASAR signaturernof the Kuroshio current is also studied in this paper.rnThe SAR image formation mechanism behind thisrnimprint is discussed with the help of the radar imagingrnmodel.