Mathieu Rouault et al: Top

TRMM SST
The TRMM Microwave Imager (TMI) is a passive microwave sensor designed to provide quantitative rainfall information over a wide swath width of 760 km. The TMI carefully measures the tiny amounts of microwave energy emitted by the Earth and its atmosphere and is able to quantify the water vapor, the cloud water and the rainfall intensity in the atmosphere. An important feature of microwave retrievals is that SSTs can be measured through clouds, which are nearly transparent at 10.7 GHz. This is a great advantage over the infrared SST observations that require a cloud-free field of view. With TMI, it is now possible to view ocean areas with persistent cloud coverage. This advantage is particularly important for measuring Agulhas Current SSTs as cloud lines have been shown to commonly occur above this current.(Lutjeharms et al., 1986; Lee-Thorp et al., 1998; Lutjeharms and Rouault, 2000). TRMM's lower altitude (350 km) results in TMI having improved ground resolution, which ranges from 5 km for the 85.5 GHz channels to 45 km for the 10.7 GHz channels.

TRMM SST

The TRMM Microwave Imager (TMI) is a passive microwave sensor designed to provide quantitative rainfall information over a wide swath width of 760 km. The TMI carefully measures the tiny amounts of microwave energy emitted by the Earth and its atmosphere and is able to quantify the water vapor, the cloud water and the rainfall intensity in the atmosphere. An important feature of microwave retrievals is that SSTs can be measured through clouds, which are nearly transparent at 10.7 GHz. This is a great advantage over the infrared SST observations that require a cloud-free field of view. With TMI, it is now possible to view ocean areas with persistent cloud coverage. This advantage is particularly important for measuring Agulhas Current SSTs as cloud lines have been shown to commonly occur above this current.(Lutjeharms et al., 1986; Lee-Thorp et al., 1998; Lutjeharms and Rouault, 2000). TRMM's lower altitude (350 km) results in TMI having improved ground resolution, which ranges from 5 km for the 85.5 GHz channels to 45 km for the 10.7 GHz channels.

Fig 3: Weekly composite of TMI derived SSTs (10 to 16 December 1998) from TRMM.

[ Abstract| Introduction | Agulhas Current|

Email: rouault@physci.uct.ac.za

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