Estimation of Small-scale Wind Fields from Synthetic Aperture Radar Data

This paper explores the possibility of estimating smallscale vector wind fields from SAR data by applying certain dynamical constraints to the wind field. The method is illustrated for the case of a diverging surface flow field that is intended to represent a precipitationinduced downdraft. A simulated radar cross section map generated from this flow field is used to reconstruct the wind field by choosing the wind direction at each point so as to minimize the vorticity. The method works well for this case because the input wind field was chosen to be irrotational. For cases in which the vorticity is not zero, it may be possible to generalize the method by applying other dynamical constraints.