A method for extracting the ocean surface wind vector from the forthcoming ERS-1 Scatterometer has been presented. The simulated ERS-I scatterometer data has been used in the present analysis. The ambiguities in the retrieval of wind directions have been removed by using a median filler. The extraction of wind field has been evaluated in terms of percentage skill in identifying the actual wind field (within +20°in direction) used for simulating the scatterometer data. The skill has been determined for various noisy data sets simulated from different wind fields. It has been found after filtering the ambiguities that the percentage improvement over the average instrument skill is 52 per cent. The dynamic range of instrument skill has been improved from "57–67 per cent to as84−99 per cent, for the data sets used in the study, after filtration. The synoptic wind direction patterns have been successfully recovered despite the variability in the skill after filtering the ambiguities.