Preliminary results of the advanced L-band transmission and reflection observationof the sea surface (ALBATROSS) campaign: Preparing the SMOS calibration and validation activities

So far a number of models have been developed to estimate the emission of the sea surface at L-band as a function of different key physical variables, such as the Sea Surface Temperature (SST), the Sea Surface Salinity (SSS) and the roughness as well as the presence of sea foam, but none has demonstrated to clearly perform better than the others. An important contribution in that direction will be given by the Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS) mission in the next future, when global and frequent measurements of the ocean will be available and, jointly with in-situ measurements collected by buoys or vessels, will permit further studies. To rehearse and optimally prepare the future analyses, two field experiments (the Advanced L-BAnd Transmission and Reflection Observations of the Sea Surface - ALBATROSS 2008 and 2009 -) have been carried out in one of the SMOS Calibration and Validation sites: The North Atlantic Subtropical Gyre. Brightness temperature measurements, using L-band real aperture radiometers, jointly with the reflected GPS signal, and in-situ measurements of SSS, SST, wind speed, and wave spectrum were collected during these experiments. The measurements have been analyzed and the first results of this analysis are presented. After an introductory section, the campaign set-up and the measurement procedure is described in section II, while the data processing is explained in section III. Finally, section IV is devoted to the presentation of the preliminary results of the study.