Search results for "brightness temperature"
showing 10 items of 54 documents
Millimeter-VLBI observations of low-luminosity active galactic nuclei with source-frequency phase-referencing
2021
We report millimeter-VLBI results of low-luminosity active galactic nuclei (M 84 and M 87) up to 88 GHz with source-frequency phase-referencing observations. We detected the weak VLBI core and obtained the first image of M 84 at 88 GHz. The derived brightness temperature of M 84 core was about 7.2$\times$10$^9$ K, which could serve as a lower limit as the core down to 30 Schwarzschild radii was still un-resolved in our 88 GHz observations. We successfully determined the core-shifts of M 87 at 22-44 GHz and 44-88 GHz through source-frequency phase-referencing technique. The jet apex of M 87 could be deduced at about 46 $\mu$as upstream of the 43 GHz core from core-shift measurements. The est…
Time-variations of zeroth-order vegetation absorption and scattering at L-band
2021
Abstract Surface soil moisture and vegetation optical depth (VOD), as an indicator of vegetation wet biomass, from passive microwave remote sensing have been increasingly applied in global ecology and climate research. Both soil moisture and VOD are retrieved from satellite brightness temperature measurements assuming a zeroth order radiative transfer model, commonly known as the tau-omega model. In this model the emission of a vegetated surface is dependent on soil moisture, vegetation absorption and vegetation scattering. Vegetation scattering is normally represented by the single scattering albedo, ω, and is commonly assumed to be a time-invariant calibration parameter to achieve high ac…
A simplified method for estimating the total water vapor content over sea surfaces using NOAA-AVHRR channels 4 and 5
2002
A simplified method for estimating the total amount of atmospheric water vapor, W, over sea surfaces using NOAA-AVHRR Channels 4 and 5 is presented. This study has been carried out using simulated AVHRR data at 11 and 12 /spl mu/m (with MODTRAN 3.5 code and the TIGR database) and AVHRR, PODAAC, and AVISO databases provided by the Louis Pasteur University (Strasbourg-France), NASA-NOAA, and Meteo France, respectively. The method is named linear atmosphere-surface temperature relationship (LASTR). It is based on a linear relationship between the effective atmospheric temperature in AVHRR Channel 4 and sea surface temperature. The LASTR method was compared with the linear split-window relation…
Improved Temperature and Emissivity Separation Algorithm for Multispectral and Hyperspectral Sensors
2017
The Temperature and Emissivity Separation (TES) algorithm was originally developed for the Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER). This paper focuses on improving the TES algorithm. The main modification is the replacement of the normalized emissivity module with a new module, which is based on the smoothing of spectral radiance signatures. Smoothing is performed by estimating emissivity using an optimized approximation of the relationship between brightness temperature and emissivity. The improved TES algorithm, which is called Optimized Smoothing for Temperature Emissivity Separation (OSTES), was first tested on simulated data from three different sensors, …
First evaluation of the simultaneous SMOS and ELBARA-II observations in the Mediterranean region
2012
Abstract The SMOS (Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity) mission was launched on November 2, 2009. Over the land surfaces, simultaneous retrievals of surface soil moisture (SM) and vegetation characteristics made from the multi-angular and dual polarization SMOS observations are now available from Level-2 (L2) products delivered by the European Space Agency (ESA). Therefore, first analyses evaluating the SMOS observations in terms of Brightness Temperatures (TB) and L2 products (SM and vegetation optical depth TAU) can be carried out over several calibration/validation (cal/val) sites selected by ESA over all continents. This study is based on SMOS observations and in situ measurements carried …
L-Band radiative properties of vine vegetation at the MELBEX III SMOS Cal/Val Site
2012
Radiative properties at 1.4 GHz of vine vegetation are investigated by measuring brightness temperatures with the ETH L-band Radiometer II (ELBARA II) operated on a tower at the Mediterranean Ecosystem L-band Characterisation Experiment III (MELBEX III) field site in Spain. To this aim, experiments with and without a reflecting foil placed under the vines were performed for the vegetation winter and summer states, respectively, to provide prevailingly information on vegetation transmissivities. The resulting parameters, which can be considered as "ground truth" for the MELBEX III vineyard, were retrieved from brightness temperature at horizontal and vertical polarization measured at observa…
Accuracy assessment of land surface temperature retrievals from MSG2-SEVIRI data
2011
The accuracy of the Land Surface Temperature (LST) product generated operationally by the EUMETSAT Land Surface Analysis Satellite Applications Facility (LSA SAF) from the data registered by the Spinning Enhanced Visible and Infrared Imager (SEVIRI) on board the geostationary METEOSAT Second Generation 2 (MSG2, Meteosat 9) satellite was assessed on two test sites in Eastern Spain: a homogeneous, fully vegetated rice field and a high-plain, homogeneous area of shrubland. The LSA SAF LSTs were compared with ground LST measurements in the conventional temperature-based (T-based) method. We also validated the LSA SAF LST product by using an alternative radiance-based (R-based) method, with grou…
The SMAP and Copernicus Sentinel 1A/B microwave active-passive high resolution surface soil moisture product
2019
Abstract Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) mission of NASA was launched in January 2015. Currently, SMAP has an L-band radiometer and a defunct L-band radar with a rotating 6-m mesh reflector antenna. On July 7th, 2015, the SMAP radar malfunctioned and became inoperable. Consequently, the production of high-resolution active-passive soil moisture product got hampered, and only ~2.5 months (April 15th, 2015 to July 7th, 2015) of data remain available. Therefore, during the SMAP post-radar phase, many ways were examined to restart the high-resolution soil moisture product generation of the SMAP mission. One of the feasible approaches was to substitute the SMAP radar with other available SAR…
THE RELATION BETWEEN AGN GAMMA-RAY EMISSION AND PARSEC-SCALE RADIO JETS
2009
We have compared the radio emission from a sample of parsec-scale AGN jets as measured by the VLBA at 15 GHz, with their associated gamma-ray properties that are reported in the Fermi LAT 3-month bright source list. We find in our radio-selected sample that the gamma-ray photon flux correlates well with the quasi-simultaneously measured compact radio flux density. The LAT-detected jets in our radio-selected complete sample generally have higher compact radio flux densities, and their parsec-scale cores are brighter (i.e., have higher brightness temperature) than the jets in the LAT non-detected objects. This suggests that the jets of bright gamma-ray AGN have preferentially higher Doppler-b…
Can turbulence within the field of view cause significant biases in radiative transfer modeling at the 183 GHz band?
2018
The hypothesis whether turbulence within the passive microwave sounders field of view can cause significant biases in radiative transfer modeling at the 183 GHz water vapor absorption band is tested. A novel method to calculate the effects of turbulence in radiative transfer modeling is presented. It is shown that the turbulent nature of water vapor in the atmosphere can be a critical component of radiative transfer modeling in this band. Radiative transfer simulations are performed comparing a uniform field with a turbulent one. These comparisons show frequency dependent biases which can be up to several kelvin in brightness temperature. These biases can match experimentally observe…