Simulation on Retrieving of Atmospheric Wet Path Delay by Microwave Radiometer on HY-2 Satellite

HY-2 satellite is a new ocean-oriented satellite which is to monitor the dynamic ocean environment with microwave sensors to detect sea surface wind field, sea surface height and sea surface temperature. In order to correct altimeter path delay due to the atmosphere, there is a microwave radiometer (ACMR) planned to be installed in the same satellite. ACMR is a three-band nadir-sounding passive microwave radiometer, which operates at 18.7, 23.8, and 37.0 GHz. In this paper, principles on retrieving of atmospheric wet path delay are firstly introduced, and then algorithms are derived for ACMR retrieving wet path delay using simulated oceanic brightness temperatures by a great variety of ocean-atmosphere database. The retrievals are tested by those ground truths from the database, and the retrieval errors are evaluated.