Contribution of breaking wave on the co-polarized backscattering measured by the Chinese Gaofen-3 SAR

In this study, the non-Bragg (NB) scattering due to breaking waves as measured by the C-band synthetic aperture radar (SAR) is investigated using more than 300 Gaofen-3 (GF-3) SAR images, which were acquired in quad-polarization stripmap (QPS) mode, that is, co-polarization [vertical–vertical (VV) and horizontal–horizontal (HH)] and cross-polarization [vertical–horizontal (VH) and horizontal–vertical (HV)]. First, the quality of SAR-based wind estimation is checked against the Haiyang-2B (HY-2B) scatterometer and European Center for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) reanalysis (ERA-5), indicating a wind speed accuracy of 1.62 m s−1 root-mean-square error (RMSE) and a 0.89 correlation. Then, the SAR-derived wind and HYbrid Coordinate Ocean Model (HYCOM) sea surface current are used to simulate Bragg resonant roughness. The non-polarized (NP) wave breaking contribution σ wb on co-polarized SAR-measured normalized radar cross section (NRCS) σ 0 is studied, which is derived using two methods: an approach of the Bragg theory and empirical function. Numerical simulations are contrasted with actual SAR measurements: they show that the theoretical-based approach provides accurate enough simulations of the NP contribution, especially at the HH-polarization channel. To deeply understand the behavior of sea surface scattering under breaking conditions, the third-generation WAVEWATCH-III (WW3) model is used to simulate wake-breaking parameters, i.e. whitecap coverage (WCC), whitecap foam thickness (WCT) and whitecap breaking height (WCH), which are then collocated with SAR images. The difference between simulated co-polarized NRCS and the measured one versus sea surface dynamics parameters (i.e. SAR-derived wind speed, HYCOM sea surface speed, and WW3-simulated significant wave height) shows that NP enhances HH-polarized backscattering, while it damps the VV-polarized backscattering. In addition, the contribution of σ wb could be ignored for WCC and WCT larger than 15 × 10−3 and 40 × 10−3 m, respectively. Moreover, the ratio reduces with the increasing WCH greater than 2.0 m; in particular, the ratio likely remains to be 0.1 as WCH is greater than 2.5 m. Generally, the HH-polarized backscattering is relatively sensitive with the wave-breaking parameters; however, this behavior has to be further studied utilizing buoy-measured wave breaking data.