Carols Campaign, Scientific Data Analysis Results

The CAROLS L-band radiometer, which is built and designed as a copy of DTU EMIRAD II instrument will be used in conjunction with other airborne instruments (in particular the C-band scatterometer STORM) in coordination with in situ field campaigns for future SMOS CAL/VAL activities. A validation campaign with four flights was made over the South West of France and the Bay of Biscay (Atlantic Ocean) in September 2007. Different instrumented sites over ocean and land surfaces were covered. Moreover, in order to qualify the radiometric data, different types of aircraft maneuvers were performed over the ocean: circle flights, wing and nose wags. We present in this paper the first analysis of the data quality using these ocean measurements. We show a very good sensitivity of both channels.