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Concept
Microwave radiometer
Summary
A microwave radiometer (MWR) is a radiometer that measures energy emitted at one millimeter-to-metre wavelengths (frequencies of 0.3–300 GHz) known as microwaves. Microwave radiometers are very sensitive receivers designed to measure thermally-emitted electromagnetic radiation. They are usually equipped with multiple receiving channels to derive the characteristic emission spectrum of planetary atmospheres, surfaces or extraterrestrial objects. Microwave radiometers are utilized in a variety of environmental and engineering applications, including remote sensing, weather forecasting, climate monitoring, radio astronomy and radio propagation studies.
Using the microwave spectral range between 1 and 300 GHz provides complementary information to the visible and infrared spectral range. Most importantly, the atmosphere and also vegetation is semi-transparent in the microwave spectral range. This means components like dry gases, water vapor, or hydrometeors interact with microwave radiation but overall even the cloudy atmosphere is not completely opaque in this frequency range.
For weather and climate monitoring, microwave radiometers are operated from space as well as from the ground. As remote sensing instruments, they are designed to operate continuously and autonomously often in combination with other atmospheric remote sensors like for example cloud radars and lidars. They allow the derivation of important meteorological quantities such as vertical temperature and humidity profiles, columnar water vapor quantity, and columnar liquid water path with a high temporal resolution on the order of minutes to seconds under nearly all weather conditions. Microwave radiometers are also used for remote sensing of Earth's ocean and land surfaces, to derive ocean temperature and wind speed, ice characteristics, and soil and vegetation properties.
First developments of microwave radiometer were dedicated to the measurement of radiation of extraterrestrial origin in the 1930s and 1940s.
Official source
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