This dissertation provides a robust radiometric calibration for the TRMM Microwave Imager to correct systematic brightness temperature errors, which vary dynamically with orbit position (time) and day of the year. The presence of a time-varying bias in TMI is confirmed by inter-calibration with WindSat and SSMI. This time varying bias is manifested as a time of day dependent variation of the relative biases between TMI and both WindSat and SSMI. In this dissertation, we provide convincing evidence that this time-varying Tb bias in TMI is caused by variations in the physical temperature of the emissive TMI reflector antenna. This dissertation provides an empirical correction that largely corrects this time-varying bias. The TMI bias is estimated by comparing the 10.7 GHz V-polarization channel observations with RTM Tb predictions, and the Tb correction is applied as a function of orbit time for every day of the one year period. Furthermore, this dissertation provides a qualitative physical basis for the estimated Tb bias patterns and provides conclusive evidence that the empirical correction applied to TMI Tb measurements (both ocean and land) largely corrects the time-varying TMI calibration. This is accomplished by demonstrating that the local time-of-day dependence (in the uncorrected TMI Tb values) is removed in the corrected TMI Tb's.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ucf.edu/oai:stars.library.ucf.edu:etd-4596 |
| Date | 01 January 2008 |
| Creators | Gopalan, Kaushik |
| Publisher | STARS |
| Source Sets | University of Central Florida |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | Electronic Theses and Dissertations |
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