Microwave Radiometric Complex for Studying the Thermal Structure of the Earth’s Atmosphere

Abstract

We describe a microwave radiometric complex intended for remote passive monitoring of the atmospheric temperatures from the Earth’s surface. The complex consists of three spectroradiometers operating in a frequency range of 50–60 GHz, which covers the central part of the absorption band of molecular oxygen and its low-frequency slope. The radiometers have different spectral resolutions and allow one to simultaneously study the thermal structure of the surface air, the free troposphere, and the stratosphere. To ensure internal calibration of the intensity of the received atmospheric radiation, a built-in device of the modulator-calibrator type on the basis of the Schottky-barrier GaAs diodes is used. The complex is equipped with an automated system to control the measurement process, calibration, and preliminary data processing. Using the microwave sensing results, we intend to retrieve the atmospheric temperature profiles in an altitude interval of 0.05–55 km on the basis on the Bayesian approach to solving ill-posed inverse problems.