Reducing systematic errors on SMOS retrieved salinity: Calibration of brightness temperature images and forward model improvement

SMOS salinity inversion consists of minimizing the residual between measured and modeled brightness temperatures. The minimization procedure is a great challenge and crucial step, but its success depends on the quality of the forward model. Consequently, we present an empirical update of pre-launch L-band emissivity forward models, where the essential improvement is related to the emissivity by a rough sea surface. The improvement is quantified in terms of retrieved salinity accuracy compared to the climatology.