Passive microwave observations of South America and surrounding oceans from Russian Meteor-M No. 2 and Japan GCOM-W1 satellites

ABSTRACT

A new Russian Meteorological Satellite Meteor-M No. 2 with onboard multichannel microwave radiometer MTVZA-GY was launched on sun synchronous orbit in July 2014. The radiometer receives the outgoing radiation of the Earth at 29 channels at the frequency ranges ν = 10–48, 52–57, 90–93 and 176–190 GHz. Conical scanning is performed at the incidence angle 65°. The data derived over the Amazon basin rain forest and the cloudless calm areas in the South Atlantic and South Pacific Ocean and the computed brightness temperatures (T_Bs) served for the MTVZA-GY external calibration. A comparison of the T_B time series obtained by the MTVZA-GY and well-calibrated AMSR2 radiometer onboard GCOM-W1 was used for assessment of the long-term stability of the MTVZA-GY in flight. The joint analysis of the T_B time series at ν = 10.6, 42.0 and 91.6 GHz allowed to reveal the variations associated with the wet and dry seasons in the Amazon forest as well as events caused by the rain and heavy clouds during satellite observations. The multichannel approach was also used to study structure, evolution and fields of the sea surface wind, total water vapour content and total cloud liquid water content in the cyclonic formations over the South Atlantic and South Pacific Oceans.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by FEB RAS grant 15-I-1-009 о and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency Project F12.