High Winds

The Passive Active L- and S-band Sensor (PALS) is a combined airborne polarimetric radiometer and radar developed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). It was designed to evaluate the benefits of combining remote passive and active sensors for ocean salinity and soil moisture measurements. Both the radiometer and radar within PALS operate across the L- (1.41 GHz, 1.26 GHz) and S-band (2.69 GHz, 3.15 GHz) frequencies to measure brightness temperature and radar backscatter of ocean salinity and soil moisture. PALS has a spatial resolution ranging from 600 to 1500 m depending on the altitude of the aircraft. PALS can be equipped on many different aircraft due to its design and is typically used for validation of Aquarius and SMAP satellite observations.

The Airborne Expendable Conductivity Temperature Depth Probe (AXCTD) is an in situ expendable CTD sensor that is deployed from an aircraft. AXCTDs are released from the aircraft into the ocean, where they release a CTD probe to collect measurements of conductivity and temperature up to a depth of 1000 meters. These measurements are sent to the aircraft by radio operating in the 170-173 MHz frequency range. AXCTDs have a typical sampling rate of about 4 Hz and have a vertical resolution of less than 1 meter.

The Polarimetric Ku-band Scatterometer (PolSCAT) is an airborne polarimetric scanning scatterometer developed at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). It measures radar backscatter to determine ocean surface winds and snow water equivalent (SWE). PolSCAT operates at 13.95 GHz and can detect vertical and horizontal polarized radar echoes simultaneously. It has a footprint of 1 km by 0.7 km at a flight altitude of 8 km.

This description will be added in a future version.

This description will be added in a future version.