A High Resolution Full Earth Disk Model for Microwave Observations from GEO

A proposed instrument for deployment on next generation Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES) platforms is the Geostationary Synthetic Thinned Aperture Radiometer (GeoSTAR) [1,2]. A high resolution full earth disk model has been developed to aid in the development of the instrument design and to characterize sensor performance. A variety of publicly available geophysical fields are used as data inputs into a full radiative transfer model that also accounts for the propagation and viewing geometries from GEO. The resulting model simulates full disk microwave images with the highest known resolution. The model can be used in concert with an instrument simulator to conduct design tradeoff studies. With the capability of generating high resolution brightness images at different frequencies, atmospheric profile retrievals can be evaluated.