Influence of wind-roughed sea surface on detection performance of spaceborne oceanic lidar

•The influence of wind-roughed sea surface on detection performance of spaceborne oceanic lidar, such as the recommended incident angles, and the inaccuracy of the signal depth, are studied using the spaceborne oceanic lidar radiative transfer model we developed.•The recommended incident angles for spaceborne oceanic lidar system are 35°∼37°, considering the lidar surface integrated attenuated backscatter.•The results show that the maximum possible error of detection depth is within 8.2% when the wind speed is below 15 m/s and the incident zenith angle is less than 30°, indicating that the spaceborne oceanic lidar enables to detect the global ocean effectively.