An Operational All-Weather Wind Speed from AMSR2

The Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer-2 (AMSR2) on board the Global Change Observation Mission-Water (GCOM-W) launched in May 2012 by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) is acquiring electromagnetic radiation from the Earth for the purpose of monitoring its environmental and climate system. Among a suite of oceanic environmental data records (EDR), the Ocean Surface Winds Team of the Satellite Applications and Research (STAR) group at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has developed an all-weather wind speed (AWS) by exploiting AMSR2 brightness temperature (Tb) measurements. The new product provides wind speeds in normal and extreme weather conditions with minimal flagging and excellent accuracy. Validation results of this novel AMSR2 AWS product, represented in this paper, show a mean bias of 0 m/s and an rms error < 2 m/s when compared to numerical weather models under all weather conditions.