LG-mod: A modified local gradient (LG) method to retrieve SAR sea surface wind directions in marine coastal areas

This paper describes a novel SAR wind direction estimation method based on the computation of local gradients over quasi-linear and quasi-periodic structures detected by SAR imagery. The method relies upon the standard LG method for the part relevant to the computation of the local gradients. The novelty is that the dominant local wind direction and related accuracy are estimated using results derived from the Directional Statistics. The LG-Mod is validated against in situ coastal wind measurements provided by instrumented buoys with 63 ENVISAT ASAR images. Results show an overall agreement with RMSE values obtained for off-shore areas, but residual effects due to the complex phenomena occurring in the proximity of shoreline may degrade the performance when running in automated mode.