Variations in snow cover and vegetation in the Province of Quebec, Canada, were characterized for a transect spanning from 50uN to 60uN during the International Polar Year field campaign of February 2008. The main objective of this study was to compare measured (AMSR-E) and modeled (MEMLS) brightness temperature (Tb) and to analyze differences in the in situ measurement of snow water equivalent...

We have developed a new algorithm to estimate the surface air specific humidity over the ocean from AMSR-E data. It should be noted that remarkably reduced random errors of the estimated surface air specific humidity result from using the surface air specific humidity provided by reanalysis data. We validated our new algorithm using independent ship and buoy data. The bias, RMS error, and corre...

Lidar and radar observations from CALIPSO and CloudSat missions have allowed the development of methods to determine atmospheric parameters [1, 2]. Total aerosol optical depth (AOD) and cloud liquid water path have thus been derived at the scale of the lidar or radar footprint using AMSR-E wind speed information [3, 4], or the combination of lidar and radar observations using ocean surface echo...

A combined use of SAR (ERS-1, ERS-2 and Envisat), visible and thermal infrared (NOAA AVHRR) and microwave radiometric (Aqua AMSR-E) images as well as the results of modeling were integrated to associate the SAR backscatter patterns observed in warm and cold seasons to physical and biological forcing processes between southern Sakhalin and northern Hokkaido-Kuril Islands. The Soya Warm Current f...

Because of the conservation of mass, the divergence of the moisture transport integrated over the depth of the atmosphere should balance the fresh water flux (evaporation-precipitation) at the surface. Monitoring these two terms is critical to the characterization of the hydrological cycle and climate change. Direct in situ measurements of moisture transport, evaporation, and precipitation are ...

In this study, five different snow algorithms (Chang algorithm, GSFC 96 algorithm, AMSR-E SWE algorithm, Improved Tibetan Plateau algorithm and Savoie algorithm) were selected to validate the accuracy of snow algorithms over China. These algorithms were compared for the accuracy of snow depth algorithms with AMSR-E brightness temperature data and ground measurements on February 10-12, 2010. Res...

Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer (AMSR) on a board of ADEOS-II satellite had 14 channels, two of which received outgoing Earth’s radiation at an absorption band of molecular oxygen at frequencies ν = 50.3 and 52.8 GHz with vertical (V) polarization. Numerical experiments with a microwave radiative transfer model were carried out at the variations of the atmospheric and ocean surface param...

Planting and harvesting times drive cropland phenology. There are few datasets that derive explicit phenological metrics, and these datasets use the visible to near infrared (VNIR) spectrum. Many different methods have been used to derive phenometrics such as Start of Season (SOS) and End of Season (EOS), leading to differing results. This discrepancy is partly due to spatial and temporal compo...

For several years passive microwave observations have been used to retrieve soil moisture from the Earth’s surface. Low frequency observations have the most sensitivity to soil moisture, therefore the current Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS) and future Soil Moisture Active and Passive (SMAP) satellite missions observe the Earth’s surface in the L-band frequency. In the past, several sate...