Search

The Global Change Observation Mission 1st-Water (GCOM-W1) satellite, which was launched by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency in May 2012, contains an Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer-2 (AMSR2). The AMSR2 provides multifrequency measurements of microwave energy (brightness temperature) emitted by the Earth's surface and atmosphere. However, each frequency field of view (FOV) differs in size because of its hardware design. For the retrieval of more accurate geophysical parameters from multifrequency brightness temperatures, the brightness temperatures should be modified to be the same as measured in the same FOV. The Backus–Gilbert (BG) method is one of the antenna pattern matching techniques used for this modification. We applied the BG method to the AMSR2 data to define a new data set of modified brightness temperatures, a level 1R (L1R) product that is freely and widely available. We optimized the implementation of the BG method to obtain the L1R product, with smoothing factors dynamically determined for all modified brightness temperatures. This paper describes the implementation method, including the criterion used to determine the smoothing factors and presents a quality assessment of the L1R product. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

It was experimentally confirmed that microwave energy is emitted during the compression of rocks. Land-surface deformations are likely to be accompanied by rock failures. From the experimental results, we could conclude that the microwave signals generated by rock failures near the land surface are detectable by a satellite-borne radiometer. Therefore, we developed an algorithm to evaluate the microwave energy generated by rock failures on the land surface and applied the algorithm to the data of the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer for the Earth Observing System for the earthquake that struck Al Hoceima, Morocco, on February 24, 2004. As a result, we detected definitive microwave signals around the epicenter two days before the earthquake only in the entire observation period of six years. This paper presents the details of the algorithm and the analysis results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]