Can we obtain sea-surface flow information from satellite scatterometer winds\ulcorner

A satellite scatterometer is a microwave radar sensor used to measure the backscattering at a sea surface. This instrument transmits radar pulses to the sea surface and measure the radar energy reflected back towards the source. Changes in wind velocity make sea surface roughness change and then affect on backscattered power. This gives us information of sea surface wind speed. Directions of wind vectors are acquired by multiple, collocated, and nearly simultaneous measurements. It should be noted that the scatterometer observes not the wind directly but the wind stress vector relative to the surface current. This suggests the possibility that the satellite scatterometer winds can include the effect of the surface current. This study shows the evidence that scatterometer measure surface wind stress, not surface winds and presents the velocity structure of oceanic warm and cold eddies.