MIRSL develops instruments and conducts investigations to measure winds over the ocean. Such measurements are necessary to help calibrate spaceborne instruments that measure ocean surface winds globally and to provide predictions and warnings severe weather. We are particularly interested in high wind regimes such as Tropical Cyclones (hurricanes or typhoons) and winter storms.
The primary instruments we use are scatterometers and radiometers. MIRSL developed the Integrated Wind and Rain Airborne Profiler (IWRAP), an outgrowth of earlier C-band and Ku-band scatterometers. MIRSL also developed the Stepped Frequency Microwave Radiometer (SFMR) now routinely used in hurricane reconnaisance.