Sea surface winds from sun glitter observations

Abstract

Solar light reflected by the surface of the sea depends strongly on the sea state which is driven by the wind. The relationship between the reflected light and wind speed is described by the well‐known model of Cox and Munk. Using their model, a method is derived for the retrieval of the synoptic field of wind magnitude from measurements of the glitter pattern from space. This method is applied to data obtained by the TIROS‐N satellite series. Comparison of the wind estimated in this way and the wind derived from isobaric charts shows very close agreement. The method is simple and has application over broad geographical areas.