Electrically scanning microwave radiometer

The electrically scanning microwave radiometer (ESMR) was an instrument carried by the Nimbus-5 satellite, precursor to the scanning multichannel microwave radiometer (SMMR) and special sensor microwave/imager (SSM/I) instruments.

The ESMR instrument only senses horizontally polarized radiation at a frequency of 19 GHz, and can be used to calculate sea ice concentration. However, results are difficult to intercompare to SMMR / SSMI. The ESMR scanned along the satellite track, leading to a wide range of incident angles; SMMR scanned with a constant angle of 50 degrees, allowing both horizontally and vertically polarised data to be received; SMMR also had 5 instead of one channels, leading to improved sea ice retrievals.[1]

References

  1. ↑ Robert J. Gurney; James L. Foster; Claire L. Parkinson (1993). Atlas of satellite observations related to global change. Cambridge University Press. pp. 371–. ISBN 978-0-521-43467-6.
  • "Nimbus-5 ESMR Daily Polar Gridded Brightness Temperatures". National Snow and Ice Data Center. May 2008.
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