Microwave Remote Sensing

• Lecturer: Dr. G. Spreen, Dr. Christian Melsheimer
• gunnar.spreen@uni-bremen.de
• melsheimer@uni-bremen.de

Lecture Content:

Earth observations in the microwave region of the electromagnetic spectrum (wavelength 1 mm to 30 cm or frequency 300 to 1 GHz) are an important complement to those in the visible and infrared: Microwaves can penetrate clouds, and microwave remote sensing does not depend on daylight because the thermal radiation of the earth is detected instead of reflected sunlight.

Therefore, operational microwave sensors on satellites have been in orbit for 50 years, and both sensor technology and retrieval algorithms undergo continuous improvement. For example, at the IUP daily sea ice maps are produced based on data from the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer 2 on the Japanese satellite GCOM-W1.
This course will cover:

* principles of microwave radiometers
* interaction of microwaves with the atmosphere, ocean, land and ice
* Retrieval of physical parameters from microwave data
* existing sensors and data products