The Along Track Scanning Radiometer series has a long and glorious history, the ATSR instruments being known to be well calibrated, stable, and characterized by relatively high spatial resolution. After the premature departure of ENVISAT (April 2012), the ATSR community started looking into Level 1 interesting features that had not been in the focus for many years. In this context, ESA initiated a small project, called "ATSR Long Term Stability" (ALTS), in the framework of the Long Term Data Preservation programme. The aim of this project is to start looking into some ATSR characteristics from innovative perspectives. The ALTS consortium (TELESPAZIO-VEGA, CNR-ISAC, RHEA, EOSense, SERCO) put together a team of very critical and motivated researchers, never before involved in ATSR studies but with recognized international experience in other fields of remote sensing. A number of issues which up to now have had minor impact on the baseline mission objective of SST retrieval have been investigated, such as: 1) the geolocation and the nadir-forward view collocation quality 2) the radiometric calibration stability (all channels) 3) the (official) cloud mask reliability 4) the documentation availability across the whole instrument series (technical notes, scientific articles, project deliverables ...) In the first two years of ALTS, the investigations led to interesting advances (e.g. a new water vapour retrieval), or to the development of new tools (e.g. transformation from "gridded" to "ungridded" Level 1 products). The extensive work on the radiometric calibration is now producing its results. It should be emphasised that improvements of any aspect of Level 1 products could improve the quality of existing algorithm retrievals or facilitate the development of new products. In this contribution, we will provide details on ALTS achievements, demonstrating the paramount importance of the revision of "old" data for future perspectives, and on the possible outlooks.
The ALTS project: everything you always wanted to know about ATSR (but were afraid to ask)
Dinelli Bianca Maria;Castelli Elisa;Papandrea Enzo;
2016
Abstract
The Along Track Scanning Radiometer series has a long and glorious history, the ATSR instruments being known to be well calibrated, stable, and characterized by relatively high spatial resolution. After the premature departure of ENVISAT (April 2012), the ATSR community started looking into Level 1 interesting features that had not been in the focus for many years. In this context, ESA initiated a small project, called "ATSR Long Term Stability" (ALTS), in the framework of the Long Term Data Preservation programme. The aim of this project is to start looking into some ATSR characteristics from innovative perspectives. The ALTS consortium (TELESPAZIO-VEGA, CNR-ISAC, RHEA, EOSense, SERCO) put together a team of very critical and motivated researchers, never before involved in ATSR studies but with recognized international experience in other fields of remote sensing. A number of issues which up to now have had minor impact on the baseline mission objective of SST retrieval have been investigated, such as: 1) the geolocation and the nadir-forward view collocation quality 2) the radiometric calibration stability (all channels) 3) the (official) cloud mask reliability 4) the documentation availability across the whole instrument series (technical notes, scientific articles, project deliverables ...) In the first two years of ALTS, the investigations led to interesting advances (e.g. a new water vapour retrieval), or to the development of new tools (e.g. transformation from "gridded" to "ungridded" Level 1 products). The extensive work on the radiometric calibration is now producing its results. It should be emphasised that improvements of any aspect of Level 1 products could improve the quality of existing algorithm retrievals or facilitate the development of new products. In this contribution, we will provide details on ALTS achievements, demonstrating the paramount importance of the revision of "old" data for future perspectives, and on the possible outlooks.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
