A Simplified Microwave Model and Its Application to the Determination of Some Oceanic Environmental Parametric Values, Using Multichannel Microwave Radiometric Observations

This paper proposes a simplified microwave model, linerized by Taylor expansion and incorporating observed fundamental microwave emissive properties, and discusses its application along with the least square method for determining some oceanic environmental parametric values from multichannel observation data. As a case study, microwave radiometric observations were made in vertical and horizontal polarizations at 6.7 and 18.6 GHz at incidence angles from 200 to 700 at steps of 100, and sea-surface temperature, wind speed, and sky brightness temperatures at the above dual frequencies at zenith angles from 200 to 700 were determined from a set of observed data at each incidence angle. The algorithm-derived results were compared with observed ones and showed good agreements within 10 percent of errors at incidence angles from 200 to 600; however, no good agreement was attained at large incidence angles such as 70°, except sky brightness temperature at 6.7 GHz. This disagreement may be attributed mainly to the difficulty and incompleteness in corrections such as estimation of reflected sky radiation and antenna characteristics, both for retrieval of the antenna temperature averaged over the main lobe and observation errors. This fact, however, may also suggest that observations at such larger incidence angles are of less utility.