Modeling the Polarimetric Response to Atmospheric Precipitation on Synthetic Aperture Radar Imagery over Ocean

The polarimetric synthetic aperture radar (SAR) response at frequencies above the C-band, has proved to be affected by atmospheric events so that they can be used to extract information useful for studying weather conditions and climate changes. A microwave model for simulating the Normalized Radar Cross Section (NRCS) over sea surface, due to atmospheric precipitation, has been developed based on the model set up over bare soil. In this work, the main results obtained by considering a realistic scenario, using the wind vectors extracted by the System for Atmospheric Modeling (SAM) data to realize the synthetic surface model, are shown. The sea surface response has been performed using the SEAWIND2 software, which is able to simulate the scatterometer backscattering coefficient.