Active-passive microwave remote sensing with SeaWinds and AMSR (Invited Presentation)

Onboard the Japanese Midori-II spacecraft is a microwave scatterometer (SeaWinds) and a microwave radiometer (AMSR). The Midori-II SeaWinds/AMSR instruments are the first combined active-passive microwave conical scanners in space. Over the world's oceans, this sensor complement is able to simultaneously image sea-surface vector wind and temperature (through clouds) as well as atmospheric temperature and moisture (vapor, cloud, rain) to an accuracy previously unattainable. There are three important synergisms obtained by combining the active and passive microwave observations: 1) highly accurate rain flagging and possibly a rain correction for the scatterometer vector winds; 2) SST retrievals that are free of errors due to wind speed and direction, and 3) overall improvement in wind vector retrieval accuracy. We will show examples of these benefits.