Doppler Phenomena at Microwave Backscattering from the Sea Surface

In the course of a series of experiments on remote sensing of the sea surface the situation when the general direction of the sea waves propagation was against the wind direction was observed. From the Doppler spectra we found that in such cases the wind influence on the sea surface is so strong that the scatterers (Bragg scatterers for X-band radar) velocity does not depend on the long sea wave orbital motion, but on the wind speed. Therefore, in this case remote sensing of sea wave parameters through the Doppler shift of the received signal would be incorrect because the Doppler Shift would not be related to the orbital motions. The results of an examination of this phenomenon with a pulsed coherent radar are presented here.