| More than a dozen of wind speed (U) algorithms have been proposed during the past 2 decades, as a result of a continuing effort to improve altimeter wind measurement. The progress in terms of accuracy, however, is seen to be rather slow. The reported root mean square (RMS) error of prevailing algorithms varies mostly between 1.6 and 2.0 m/s for the dominant wind regime. As far as the TOPEX altimeter is concerned, three measured quantities, namely, the radar cross sections from Ku and C band (sigma(Ku) and sigma(C)), as well as the significant wave height (H-s), have been used in previous algorithm developments, resulting in a variety of single-, dual-, and three-parameter model functions. On the basis of the finding of a banded dependency of the... |
