An empirical correction for the MWR brightness temperature smear effect

The Microwave Radiometer (MWR), on board of the SAC-D/Aquarius satellite, is a Dicke radiometer, operating at 23.8 and 36.5 GHz that was developed by Argentine Space Agency, CoNAE. Since the first earth surface T_B images, there has been an anomalous effect when observing strong contrast radiometric scenes, such as land/water crossings. This effect is present in all push-broom beams and results in a “smearing” of T_B observations near high contrast areas. This paper presents the initial findings on this MWR brightness temperature anomaly that is best described as a coupling of sequential MWR feed horn measurements. In the present work, an empirical approach is used to mitigate this anomalous effect.