Evaluating the effective resolution of enhanced resolution SMAP brightness temperature image products

Abstract

The MEaSUREs Calibrated Enhanced-Resolution Passive Microwave Daily Equal-Area Scalable Earth Grid 2.0 Brightness Temperature (CETB) Earth System Data Record (ESDR) includes conventional- and enhanced-resolution radiometer brightness temperature (TB) images on standard, compatible grids from calibrated satellite radiometer measurements collected over a multi-decade period. Recently, the CETB team processed the first 4 years of enhanced resolution Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) L-band (1.41 GHz) radiometer TB images. The CETB processing employs the radiometer form of the Scatterometer Image Reconstruction (rSIR) algorithm to create enhanced resolution images, which are posted on fine resolution grids. In this paper, we evaluate the effective resolution of the SMAP TB image products using coastline and island crossings. We similarly evaluate the effective resolution of the SMAP L1C_TB_E enhanced resolution product that is based on Backus-Gilbert processing. We present a comparison of the spatial resolution of the rSIR and L1C_TB_E enhanced resolution products with conventionally-processed (gridded) SMAP data. We find that the effective resolution of daily CETB rSIR SMAP TB images is slightly finer than that of L1C_TB_E and about 30% finer than conventionally processed data.