Microwave Remote Sensing
Microwave remote sensing at AER develops science and technology for monitoring the changing characteristics of the Earth’s atmosphere and surface. A comprehensive view is taken, starting with advancing knowledge of microwave radiative transfer phenomena followed by the development of appropriate modeling methods and algorithms to infer the state of the atmosphere and surface from radiometric measurements. Our algorithms retrieve a broad range of environmental variables, from soil moisture to cirrus cloud properties to mesospheric temperatures. While the microwave spectrum is central to the group’s work, data from infrared sensors and numerical weather prediction systems also play an integral part in our algorithms and analyses. In work spanning a wide variety of microwave instruments, the group has gained experience in validating retrievals against independent measurements and evaluating models and algorithms using simulations. Our test environment includes the capability for end-to-end simulation of all the processes that affect microwave measurements—from emission by realistic Earth scenes to antenna response and radiometer calibration. With these simulation tools we are able to evaluate the effects of sensor design decisions on the bottom-line performance of environmental retrievals.
List of Major Projects:
- Development and testing of algorithms for the DMSP Special Sensor Microwave Imager/Sounder
- Monitoring global microwave land surface emissivities and temperatures from combined AMSR-E, AMSU/AIRS, and MODIS data