Abstract
Wind speed observed by the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer (AMSR) on the Advanced Earth Observing Satellite-II (ADEOS-II) was evaluated using data from global offshore ocean buoys and the SeaWinds scatterometer. The wind speeds contained in the latest AMSR wind product (version 4) exhibit good agreement with buoy data, with a root-mean-square (rms) difference of 1.2ms-1. The systematic bias observed in the earlier versions has been eliminated by algorithm refinements. Intercomparison of the wind speeds observed globally by SeaWinds and AMSR on the same orbits also shows good agreements. The global wind speed histogram of the latest AMSR wind product (version 4) is closer to those of SeaWinds and ECMWF wind data than those of the earlier versions.
