CONAE MICROWAVE RADIOMETER COUNTS TO TB ALGORITHM V7.0 AND ON ORBIT VALIDATION

LINWOOD JONES; ZOUBAIR GHAZI; MARCH JACOB; ANDREA SANTOS-GARCIA; CINTIA BRUSCANTINI

Encuentro; 10th Aquarius/SAC-D Science Meeting; 2015

CONAE

The Central Florida Remote Sensing Lab (CFRSL), in collaboration with CONAE, havedeveloped two improved algorithms to convert the radiometric counts to brightness temperature(Tb) for production of MWR level-1 science data. This poster presents a description of thesealgorithms and shows results for MWR Cal/Val activities during the past 15 months. Version 6.0provides corrections to the previous MWR Tb algorithm (V5.0S) that remove a smallnonlinearity in the radiometer transfer function. This algorithm is based upon: 1) a reanalysis ofpre-launch thermal vacuum radiometric calibration testing to derive the antenna switch matrixloss coefficients, and 2) on orbit inter-satellite cross calibrations (XCAL) with the NavalResearch Lab?s WindSat radiometer. Results are presented that demonstrate excellentradiometric stability for a 12 month data set over both oceans and land.Also a second version (V7.0) of MWR counts to Tb algorithm is presented. This algorithm isessentially V6.0 that has been normalized to WindSat as a radiometric transfer standard. Byusing the CFRSL XCAL double-difference technique, small radiometric biases between channelshave been removed as well as systematic radiometric calibration drift over the entire MWR timeseries (~ 3 years). Comparisons between V6.0 and V7.0 are presented relative to WindSat.