High-resolution sea surface wind speeds of Super Typhoon Lekima (2019) retrieved by Gaofen-3 SAR

doi:10.1007/s11707-021-0887-8

Front. Earth Sci.

2022, Vol. 16

Issue (1) : 90-98 https://doi.org/10.1007/s11707-021-0887-8

RESEARCH ARTICLE

High-resolution sea surface wind speeds of Super Typhoon Lekima (2019) retrieved by Gaofen-3 SAR

He FANG^1,², William PERRIE⁴, Gaofeng FAN¹, Zhengquan LI¹, Juzhen CAI¹, Yue HE¹, Jingsong YANG², Tao XIE⁵, Xuesong ZHU³(

)

¹. Zhejiang Climate Centre, Hangzhou 310017, China
². State Key Laboratory of Satellite Ocean Environment Dynamics, Second Institute of Oceanography, Ministry of Natural Resources, Hangzhou 310012, China
³. Shanghai Typhoon Institute, and Key Laboratory of Numerical Modeling for Tropical Cyclone of China Meteorological Administration, Shanghai 200030, China
⁴. Fisheries & Oceans Canada, Bedford Institute of Oceanography, Dartmouth B2Y4A2, Canada
⁵. School of Remote Sensing and Geomatics Engineering, Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology, Nanjing 210044, China

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Abstract

Gaofen-3 (GF-3) is the first Chinese spaceborne multi-polarization synthetic aperture radar (SAR) instrument at C-band (5.43 GHz). In this paper, we use data collected from GF-3 to observe Super Typhoon Lekima (2019) in the East China Sea. Using a VH-polarized wide ScanSAR (WSC) image, ocean surface wind speeds at 100m horizontal resolution are obtained at 21:56:59 UTC on 8 August 2019, with the maximum wind speed, 38.9 m·s⁻¹. Validating the SAR-retrieved winds with buoy-measured wind speeds, we find that the root mean square error (RMSE) is 1.86 m·s⁻¹, and correlation coefficient, 0.92. This suggests that wind speeds retrieved from GF-3 SAR are reliable. Both the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) fine grid operational forecast products with spatial resolution, and China Global/Regional Assimilation and Prediction Enhance System (GRAPES) have good performances on surface wind prediction under weak wind speed condition (<24 m·s⁻¹), but underestimate the maximum wind speed when the storm is intensified as a severe tropical storm (>24 m·s⁻¹). With respect to SAR-retrieved wind speeds, the RMSEs are 5.24 m·s⁻¹ for ECMWF and 5.17 m·s⁻¹ for GRAPES, with biases of 4.16 m·s⁻¹ for ECMWF and 3.84 m·s⁻¹ for GRAPES during Super Typhoon Lekima (2019).

Keywords synthetic aperture radar wind speed numerical weather predication (NWP) typhoon

Corresponding Author(s): Xuesong ZHU

Just Accepted Date: 18 March 2021 Online First Date: 26 March 2021 Issue Date: 04 March 2022

Cite this article:

He FANG,William PERRIE,Gaofeng FAN, et al. High-resolution sea surface wind speeds of Super Typhoon Lekima (2019) retrieved by Gaofen-3 SAR[J]. Front. Earth Sci., 2022, 16(1): 90-98.

URL:

https://academic.hep.com.cn/fesci/EN/10.1007/s11707-021-0887-8
https://academic.hep.com.cn/fesci/EN/Y2022/V16/I1/90

Fig.1 (a)The track and entire life of Super Typhoon Lekima (2019) according to the best-track in China Meteorological Administration. The green, blue, yellow, orange, purple, and red colors represent its different phases as a tropical depression, tropical storm, severe tropical storm, typhoon, severe typhoon and super typhoon, respectively; (b) collocated GF-3 SAR raw image using VH-polarized mode over the East China Sea on 8 August 2019, at 21:56:59 UTC. The red square represents the typhoon center area.

Fig.2 Flowchart of the space matching algorithm between NWP models and the SAR image.

Fig.3 (a) In situ buoy locations and (b) GRAPES model system grid cells falling within the SAR image. White ‘*’ denotes buoys and blue ‘+’ represents GRAPES model data.

Tab.1 Detailed information on data subset on 8August, 2019

Fig.4 Ocean surface wind speed retrieved from the GF-3 SAR image using the QPS-CP model at VH-polarization for Super Typhoon Lekima (2019).

Fig.5 Ocean surface wind speeds retrieved from the GF-3 SAR image vs in situ buoy measurements.

Tab.2 Wind speed retrieved from GF-3 SAR image compared with buoy measurements (unit: m·s⁻¹)

Fig.6 (a) ECMWF and (b) GRAPES model winds under Super Typhoon Lekima (2019) on 8 August at 21:00 UTC. The black boxes show the GF-3 footprint related to the scene collected at 21:56:59 UTC.

Fig.7 SAR-retrieved wind speeds from the SAR image versus (a) ECMWF and (b) GRAPES models for 0~24.4 m·s⁻¹ winds, and (c) ECMWF and (d) GRAPES models for winds greater than 24.5 m·s⁻¹.

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