Oil Slick Observation at Low Incidence Angles in Ku‐Band

On the 20 April 2010 the oil platform Deep Water Horizon in the Gulf of Mexico suffered an explosion during the final phases of drilling an exploratory well. As a result, an oil film covered the sea surface area of several thousand square kilometers. In the present paper the data of the Ku‐band Precipitation Radar, which operates at low incidence angles, were used to explore the oil spill event. The two‐scale model of the scattering surface was used to describe radar backscatter from the sea surface. The algorithm for retrieval of normalized radar cross section at nadir and the total slope variance of large‐scale waves compared to the wavelength of electromagnetic wave (22 mm) was developed for the Precipitation Radar swath. It is shown that measurements at low incidence angles can be used for oil spill detection. This is the first time that the dependence of mean square slope of large‐scale waves on wind speed has been obtained for oil slicks from Ku‐band data, and compared to mean square slope obtained by Cox and Munk from optical data. Key Points Oil spill observation at low incidence angles Retrieval of total mean square slope of sea waves within a wide swath