Abstract
The SMOS (Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity) mission directly responds to the current lack of global observations of soil moisture and ocean salinity, which are needed to improve meteorological and climatic predictions. The mission will produce measurements of brightness temperature by using an innovative Microwave Image Radiometer using Aperture Synthesis at L-Band (MIRAS). The objective of this paper is to assess the possibility to have an operative long term monitoring of the instrument calibration in the SMOS ground segment, by observing large areas of the Earth surface characterized by a stable emissivity at L-band, with slight variations, when compared with the radiometric accuracy of MIRAS. To this aim, C band signatures collected by the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer for the Earth Observing System (AMSR-E) over the Brazilian rain forest and ERS-2 Scatterometer data over Antarctica have been analyzed, in order to select areas with the best spatial and temporal stability. Extrapolations to L-band have been obtained by using model simulations for the Amazon case and experimental data available in the literature for Antarctica. An operational procedure to monitor the selected areas has been defined to be implemented in the SMOS ground segment.
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