CAROLS campaigns 2009: First Results

The CAROLS, L band radiometer, is built and designed as a copy of EMIRAD II radiometer of DTU team. It is a Correlation radiometer with direct sampling and fully polarimetric (i.e 4 Stockes). It will be used in conjunction with other airborne instruments (in particular the C-Band scatterometer (STORM) and IEEEC GPS system, Infrared CIMEL radiometer and one visible camera), in coordination with in situ field campaigns for SMOS CAL/VAL. The instruments are implemented on board the French research airplane ATR42. A scientific campaign with thirteen flights is realized over south-western France, Valencia site and Bay of Biscay (Atlantic Ocean) in spring 2009. In order to qualify the radiometer data, different types of aircraft movements were realized: circle flights, wing and nose wags. Simultaneously to flights, different ground measurements were made over continental surfaces and ocean. Results show a good quality of data. For continental surfaces, important Radio-Frequency Interferences (RFI) were observed over a large part of the studied region.