Aquarius: Status and Recent Results

Le Vine, D. M.; Dinnat, E. P.; Lagerloef, G. S. E.; de Matthaeis, P.; Abraham, S.; Utku, C.; Kao, H.

Home/Archive/NASA NTRS

NASA NTRS · 20160005284

Aquarius: Status and Recent Results

Le Vine, D. M.·Dinnat, E. P.·Lagerloef, G. S. E.·de Matthaeis, P.·Abraham, S.·Utku, C.·Kao, H.

View original source ↗Export metadata ↓

Abstract

Aquarius is a combination active/passive instrument at L band designed to map sea surface salinity globally from space. The radiometer (passive) is the primary instrument for retrieving salinity, and the scatterometer (active) provides information to correct for a major source of error, sea surface roughness (waves). In addition, the radiometer includes a number of special features designed to meet the goal for this challenging measurement, including measurement of the third Stokes parameter to help with the correction for Faraday rotation and rapid sampling to help with the mitigation of radio frequency interference. Aquarius was launched on 10 June 2011 aboard the Aquarius/SAC-D observatory and has been working well. The salinity retrieval continues to improve, and the special features suggest the potential for new applications of remote sensing from space at L band.

Explore related subjects

Aquarius SAC-D L band

Keep this discovery

Explore connections, maps & timelines

BibTeX RIS

Le Vine, D. M., Dinnat, E. P., Lagerloef, G. S. E., de Matthaeis, P., Abraham, S., Utku, C., Kao, H.. 2014-09-11. Aquarius: Status and Recent Results. https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/20160005284

Cite the original work for its findings. Save a collection to share your selection of sources.

KEEP EXPLORING

Related reports

NASA NTRS2017

Emissivity of Frozen Regions Retrieved from Aquarius Measurements

The land emissivity model used in the Aquarius data processing has been updated for the latest data release (V5.0). In order to improve the estimates of the brightness temperatures of frozen regions, the new model uses values of surface emissivity that have been estimated from the Aquarius measurements averaged over the entire duration of the mission. The retrieved emissivities depend on the geographic location, but they depend only marginally on time, temperature and snow cover.

Aquarius↗

NASA NTRS2016

L-Band RFI in Japan

In recent years, three instruments have been launched into orbit with the aim of producing global maps of sea surface salinity and soil moisture using the 1400-1427 MHz band: SMOS, Aquarius and SMAP. Although this frequency band is allocated to passive measurements only, RFI (Radio-Frequency Interference) is present in the data of all three missions. On a global scale, the three sensors have observed approximately the same distribution of RFI. Japan is an important exception that has implications for the design of RFI detection algorithms. RFI in Japan is caused by a large number of emitters belonging to the same system (TV receivers) and for this reason some traditional RFI detection strategies detect little to no RFI over Japan. The study of this case has led to an improvement of the approach to detect RFI in Aquarius data.

Aquarius↗

NASA NTRS2016

L-band Radiometer Calibration Consistency Assessment for the SMOS, SMAP, and Aquarius Instruments

Three L-band radiometers have been observing the Earth in order to retrieve soil moisture and ocean salinity. They use different instrument configurations and calibration and retrieval algorithms. In any case, the brightness temperature retrieved at the Earth surface should be consistent between all instruments. One reason for inconsistency would be the use of different approaches for the instrument calibration or the use of different models to retrieve surface brightness temperature. We report on the different approaches used for the SMOS, SMAP and Aquarius instruments and their impact on the observations consistency.

Aquarius↗