Analysis of multi scale radiometric data acquired during the NASA Cold Land Process Experiment

One of the main goals of the NASA Cold Land Processes Experiment is to explore scaling issues associated with microwave remote sensing of snow-packs. During the experiment, microwave radiometer observations were made at scales from the plot scale up to satellite pixels (25x25 Km2). In this paper, brightness temperatures acquired by the University of Tokyo's Ground Based Microwave Radiometer-7 (GBMR-7), the NOAA Polarimetric Scanning Radiometer (PSR/A), the SSM/I and AMSR-E satellite radiometers during the third Intensive Observation Period (IOP3, dry snow, February 19 - 25, 2003) have been analyzed and compared. Differences among observations are discussed. The effects of topography, as well as different antenna footprint positions, observation times and calibrations are considered and used to understand the differences observed at the different scales. In addition, inter-satellite differences were observed.