ACMR system description and performance

Water vapor and cloud liquid water influence the accuracy of altimeter measurements by delaying the time that altimeter´s signals travel from satellite to the ocean surface and back. Atmospheric correction microwave radiometer (ACMR) can be used to measure radiation from atmosphere and earth´s surface so as to retrieve the amount of water vapor and cloud liquid water. HY-2 satellite is a Chinese satellite for ocean dynamic environmental monitoring. It launched on Aug.16, 2011. ACMR is one of HY-2 satellite payloads. The other payloads are an altimeter, a scatterometer and a scanning microwave radiometer. ACMR started to work on Sep.1, 2011. Since then, it has been in normal operation. In this paper, instrument description, pre-launch calibration and in-orbit performance assessment of ACMR are briefly presented.