Impact of the Faraday rotation on the SMOS measurements over the dome C test site: A semi-empirical study

Author

Brogioni, M. ; Macelloni, G. ; Romano, V. ; Tozzi, R. ; Drinkwater, Mark

Author_Institution

Inst. of Appl. Phys., IFAC-CNR, Firenze, Italy

fYear

2010

fDate

1-4 March 2010

Firstpage

22

Lastpage

26

Abstract

With the development of present and future low-frequency microwave missions (SMOS, Aquarius and SMAP), the need arises to estimate the effects of the ionosphere on the propagation of the electromagnetic waves. In this paper a methodology for assessing the contribution of the Faraday rotation to uncertainties in SMOS measurements over Antarctica is proposed. Particularly real TEC data and advanced geomagnetic filed model were used to compute the Faraday rotation. The obtained values demonstrate that the impact on the measured SMOS brightness temperature is in general very low reaching a maximum value of 0.2K.

Keywords

Faraday effect; atmospheric temperature; ionospheric electromagnetic wave propagation; ionospheric techniques; snow; Antarctica; Aquarius; DOME C test site; Faraday rotation; SMAP; SMOS brightness temperature; TEC data; electromagnetic waves; geomagnetic filed model; ionosphere; low-frequency microwave missions; snow; Antarctica; Data models; Extraterrestrial measurements; Faraday effect; Ionosphere; Microwave radiometry; Rotation measurement; Antarctica; Faraday rotation; SMOS; snow;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Microwave Radiometry and Remote Sensing of the Environment (MicroRad), 2010 11th Specialist Meeting on

Conference_Location

Washington, DC

Print_ISBN

978-1-4244-8120-0

Electronic_ISBN

978-1-4244-8121-7

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/MICRORAD.2010.5559596

Filename

5559596