This campaign aims at collecting observations over hurricanes in order to provide a synoptic view of hurricane development and evolution during the hurricane season, not only using Sentinel missions but also a wide variety of spaceborne measurements, with additional inputs from airborne in-situ measurements as a reference and model outputs. The availability and co-location of numerous in-situ observations,
spaceborne and airborne measurements are key points for:
- Improving of geophysical parameters retrieval schemes during extreme events – in particular for wind, waves and ocean surface velocities derived from SAR,
- Investigating the possibility to derive new geophysical parameters,
- Understanding of complex and rare phenomena like hurricanes,
- Perform joint study of hurricane extreme high winds and hurricane wind-generated waves
SHOC will also contribute to build and make available a wide variety of data for the community. On a longer time frame and for more pratical applications, this campaign is expected to open new perspectives:
- Demonstration service for Copernicus: by raising the need for a dedicated multi-mission hurricane observation strategy, SHOC wants to demonstrate the possibility to provide thorough monitoring of these extreme events on a regular basis, which could set the ground for future operational services,
- Preparation of next European Earth Observation missions: The use of cross-polarization observations for the next generation scatterometer MetOp-SG SCA is crucial for the measurement of intense winds. In this matter, the availability of a wide dataset of C-band measurements in VH polarization from Sentinel-1 and derived GMF (Geophysical Model Function) will help prepare the exploitation of this future European satellite. This also applied for STEREOID.
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