The phenomenon of sunglint, well known in satellite remote sensing, lacks a fundamental characterization under controlled laboratory conditions. Exploiting an apparatus specifically assembled for the purpose, we examine the signal collected by a photopolarimeter, pointed at a wavy water surface with measurable statistics and illuminated by a laser source. We also analyze the wave slope distributions, retrieved with an imaging system, and correlate them with the time series of glints. More particularly, we investigate the link between the occurrence of glints and that of the slopes from which they originate. In this context, the results obtained by applying the Hilbert-Huang transform technique to the slope time series are compared with those obtained through a traditional Fourier transform. This novel study first identifies the individual atomic glints as Fresnel reflection originating from a single wave facet. It then discusses the periodic character of a sequence of glints generated by a gravity wave state, as opposed to the erratic behavior of glints typical of capillary wave states. In mixed gravity-capillary conditions, it is shown that the glint properties are governed mainly by the capillary regime.

There are overshoot and undershoot phenomenon and end swing phenomenon in the cubic spline fitting in Hilbert-Huang transform. The two problems influence data quality of the empirical mode decomposition seriously. The cubic spline fitting has been analysed, and the causes of producing the overshoot and undershoot phenomenon and the end swing phenomenon have been pointed out in this paper. Two new methods of cubic spline fitting and sine spline fitting and the new technique of handling the end points of the original data curve can completely remove the overshoot and undershoot phenomenon and the end swing phenomenon on the condition of unchanging original data, and have the advantages of the continuous fitting functions and its continuous one order derivative, the simple and convenient calculations, the small calculation amount and the easy work on it.