Sea surface signature of tropical cyclones using microwave remote sensing

Measuring the sea surface during tropical cyclones (TC) is challenging due to severe weather conditions that prevent shipboard measurements and clouds which mask the sea surface for visible satellite sensors. However, sea surface emission in the microwave L-band can penetrate rain and clouds and be measured from space. The European Space Agency (ESA) MIRAS L-band radiometer on the Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS) satellite enables a view of the sea surface from which the effects of tropical cyclones on sea surface emissivity can be measured. The emissivity at these frequencies is a function of sea surface salinity (SSS), sea surface temperature (SST), sea surface roughness, polarization, and angle of emission. If the latter four variables can be estimated, then models of the sea surface emissivity can be used to invert SSS from measured brightness temperature (TB). Actual measured TB from space also has affects due to the ionosphere and troposphere, which have to be compensated for, and components due to the galactic and cosmic background radiation those have to be removed. In this research, we study the relationships between retrieved SSS from MIRAS, and SST and precipitation collected by the NASA TMI sensor from the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) satellite during Hurricane Isaac, in August 2012. During the slower movement of the storm, just before landfall on the vicinity of the Louisiana Shelf, higher precipitation amounts were associated with lower SSS and slightly increased SST. This increased trend of SST and lower SSS under regions of high precipitation are indicative of inhibited vertical mixing. The SMOS Level 2 SSS were filtered by a stepwise process with removal of high uncertainty in TB under conditions of strong surface roughness which are known to create noise. The signature of increased SST associated with increasing precipitation was associated with decreased SSS during the storm. Although further research is required, this study shows that there is a TB signal from the sea surface beneath a tropical cyclone that provides information on roughness and salinity.