A Roughness Correction For Aquarius Sea Surface Salinity Using The Conae Microwave Radiometer

Keywords

Aquarius (AQ); ocean roughness; surface salinity

Abstract

Aquarius (AQ)/SAC-D is a joint National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)/Comisión Nacional de Actividades Espaciales (CONAE; Argentine Space Agency) Earth Sciences satellite mission to measure global sea surface salinity (SSS), using a L-band radiometer/scatterometer that measures ocean brightness temperature (Tb) and radar backscatter (sigma-0). The application of L-band radiometry to retrieve SSS is a difficult task; therefore, precise Tb corrections are necessary to obtain accurate measurements. One of the major error sources is the effect of ocean roughness that 'warms' the ocean Tb. The baseline approach, to provide this ocean roughness correction, uses the AQ radar scatterometer measurement of ocean sigma-0 to infer the radiometric excess ocean emissivity. In contrast, this paper develops an alternate approach for the AQ ocean roughness correction using the MicroWave Radiometer (MWR) Tb measurements at Ka-band. The theoretical basis of this MWR ocean roughness correction algorithm is described, which translates these Ka-band measurements to L-band to remove the AQ Tb errors that are caused by ocean wind speed and direction. MWR ocean roughness correction results are compared with corresponding results from the AQ scatterometer method. Also, AQ SSS retrievals are presented using both sets of roughness corrections that demonstrate the relative effectiveness of the MWR and AQ scatterometer approaches.

Publication Date

12-1-2015

Publication Title

IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Applied Earth Observations and Remote Sensing

Volume

8

Issue

12

Number of Pages

5500-5510

Document Type

Article

Personal Identifier

scopus

DOI Link

https://doi.org/10.1109/JSTARS.2015.2482491

Socpus ID

84945937050 (Scopus)

Source API URL

https://api.elsevier.com/content/abstract/scopus_id/84945937050

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