Identification of Spaceborne Microwave Radiometer Calibration Sites for Satellite Missions

• Main Authors: E. Kim, J. Le Marshall, W. Lieff, A. Marks, S. Peischl, D. Ryu, N. Ye
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Subjects: Antarctic; The Antarctic; Antarc*
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.488.6071; http://www.mssanz.org.au/modsim09/I10/rudiger.pdf

Abstract: The first dedicated soil moisture satellite mission will be the European Space Agency's Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS) mission. This satellite, scheduled for launch in the second half of 2009, has a new type of satellite design that is based on the radio-astronomy technique of simulating a large antenna from a number of smaller ones placed some distance apart. Because of its unique design and the fact it is sensing in a currently unutilized frequency range makes it critical that on-orbit calibration targets be included in the calibration strategy. Consequently, targets such as the Antarctic, cold oceans, tropical forests and deserts are being considered. However, the large footprint size of passive microwave observations means that large scale homogeneous regions must be identified for calibration purposes. Moreover, these sites must also be either stable through time or the temporal variation easily described by models. In order to satisfy the calibration accuracy required by SMOS for soil moisture retrieval, such sites should be characterized with a brightness temperature uncertainty of less than 4K. A field experiment has been undertaken in November 2008 in the Australian Arid Zone to explore the suitability of three potential on-orbit calibration targets for SMOS. These sites were chosen for their assumed