Operational estimation of coastal wind vectors from RADARSAT SAR imagery

In this paper we are concerned with automated approaches for generating wind vectors, an in particular with comparing approaches that differ in the spatial scales of the features used to estimate wind direction from the SAR imagery. One group (Veridian Systems Division) has focused on using larger scales (3 to 16 km) and estimating directions from either a spectrum of the image or from a projection of the imagery in different directions. The other group (GKSS Research Center) has focused on much smaller spatial scales (0.4 to 1.6 km), which extract directions either in the spectrum of the image or from local gradients derived from the image.