What was the purpose of DOMECair (SMOS)?

The DOMECair (SMOS) was an airborne campaign in Antarctica supporting SMOS (Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity) calibration.

The purpose of this campaign was to assess the merits of the East Antarctic Plateau around Dome C with the Concordia station as a candidate for an Earthly calibration site.

The temporal stability has been assessed in the DOMEX framework, so the main purpose of this campaign was to assess the spatial homogeneity of this area. To this purpose a 350 x 350 km area within latitude -77 to -72 and longitude 112 to 126 was selected. This area was surveyed by profiling the brightness temperature along 11 survey lines each being 350 km long and separated by 35 km across. A tie line crossing all survey lines was also recorded.

What was the outcome of DOMECair (SMOS)?

Based on the results presented, it was concluded that the survey area contains spatial inhomogeneities that will affect the brightness temperature measured by SMOS. The brightness temperature measured by SMOS may shift several tenths of a K if the sampling location is shifted just within less than the 3 dB width of the footprint. Absolute calibration of SMOS with tenths of a K accuracy using the East Antarctic Plateau therefore requires a careful characterisation of the test site.

Download the DOMECair (SMOS) Final Report

Digital Object Identifier: https://doi.org/10.5270/esa-hju6idr - DOMECair (SMOS): "DOMECair Campaign EMIRAD Data: Presentation & Analysis"

The campaign data is available online via FTPS upon submission of a data access request. An active EO Sign In account is required to submit the request.

The data can be downloaded via an FTP client (e.g., FileZilla or WinSCP) using the option "Implicit FTP over TLS".

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