Assessment of the New Sea Surface Wind Products from EOS-6 Scatterometer

The scatterometer onboard Earth Observation Satellite-06 (EOS-06) provides global wind speed and direction. This study presents the accuracy assessment of the wind products from EOS-06 for the first time. The EOS-06 winds are validated with observations from moored buoys and Advanced Scatterometer (ASCAT) for global and for different oceanic basins separately. The comparison of measurements from EOS-06 with the moored buoys indicated significant agreement between the two. The global correlation coefficients for the wind speed and direction are 0.8 and 0.78, respectively, suggesting the reliability of EOS-06 wind observations. The root mean squared error (RMSE) of the EOS-06 wind speed and direction are 1.6 m/s and 25 degrees, respectively. Overall, separate comparisons for the three different oceans show that wind products from the EOS-06 scatterometer are consistent with the moored buoys and ASCAT observations. The average global RMSE and bias between EOS-06 and ASCAT winds are 0.46 m/s and 0.33 m/s, respectively. EOS-06 wind speeds correlate well (> 0.75) with the ASCAT observations. Based on the validation results, it is concluded that the wind products from the EOS-06 scatterometer satisfies the mission requirement and can be used for various scientific and operational applications.