Early validation of operational SAR wind retrievals from Sentinel-1A

The computation of wind speeds at high (<; 1 km) resolution from spaceborne synthetic aperture radar (SAR) is a mature geophysical application. A number of researchers, a modest sample of which are cited [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7], have described the geophysical relationship between normalized radar cross section (NRCS) and ocean surface wind speed, and how this relationship can be exploited to infer wind speeds. In May 2013, NOAA began the operational production of SAR-derived wind speed maps using Canadian Radarsat-2 imagery purchased by the U.S. National Ice Center. Monaldo et al. [8] chronicle the history of the first observation of ocean wind features from the Seasat SAR and its evolution to an operational product.