Boreal, Temperate, and Tropical Forests as Vicarious Calibration Sites for Spaceborne Microwave Radiometry

—We develop methods of using boreal, temperate, and tropical forests as vicarious calibration sites for spaceborne microwave radiometers. The extended sites and improved calibration techniques enable examining warm-scene performances as a complement to cold scenes over the ocean, providing information about scan-dependent biases, detecting and correcting possible calibration errors, and intercalibrating different radiometers. Specifically, this paper shows results as follows. Warm-scene calibration is expanded beyond previously utilized sites in the Amazon rainforest to include inland boreal and temperate forests, as well as forests in coastal and island regions. These additional sites increase the available warm-scene sample size by a factor of 30 compared with using Amazon rainforests alone, allowing more accurate and statistically robust calibration. In addition, their widespread near-global distribution enables near-continuous monitoring of radiometer performance, e.g., with a t...

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2016
• Where: TGRS
• Authors: John Xun Yang, Darren S. McKague, Christopher S. Ruf
• Keywords: TGRS 2016