Open AccessThe ISAR Instrument Uncertainty Model
Author(s) -
Werenfrid Wimmer,
I. S. Robinson
Publication year - 2016
Publication title -
journal of atmospheric and oceanic technology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.774
H-Index - 124
eISSN - 1520-0426
pISSN - 0739-0572
DOI - 10.1175/jtech-d-16-0096.1
Subject(s) - metrology , radiometer , inverse synthetic aperture radar , remote sensing , satellite , environmental science , measurement uncertainty , computer science , quality assurance , meteorology , earth observation , sea surface temperature , radar , optics , geology , physics , radar imaging , telecommunications , service (business) , economy , astronomy , quantum mechanics , economics
Measurements of sea surface temperature at the skin interface ( ) made by an Infrared Sea Surface Temperature Autonomous Radiometer (ISAR) have been used for a number of years to validate satellite sea surface temperature (SST), especially high-accuracy observations such as made by the Advanced Along-Track Scanning Radiometer (AATSR). The ISAR instrument accuracy for measuringis ±0.1 K (Donlon et al.), but to satisfy Quality Assurance Framework for Earth Observation (QA4EO) principles and metrological standards (Joint Committee for Guides in Metrology), an uncertainty model is required. To develop the ISAR uncertainty model, all sources of uncertainty in the instrument are analyzed and an uncertainty value is assigned to each component. Finally, the individual uncertainty components are propagated through the ISARretrieval algorithm to estimate a total uncertainty for each measurement. The resulting ISAR uncertainty model applied to a 12-yr archive ofmeasurements from the Bay of Biscay shows that 77.6% of the data are expected to be within ±0.1 K and a further 17.2% are within 0.2 K.