Passive Microwave Radiometers & Climate Monitoring: A Study

A brief overview of the role of passive microwave radiometer in climate monitoring is given in this paper. Passive microwave radiometers have been an important part of the emerging field of climate applications of satellite data. Even though the researchers in passive microwave remote sensing are less as compared to visible and infrared remote sensing, the characteristics of microwave radiometers lend themselves more readily to climate applications. I will review some of the important advances this area has seen in the last thirty years, and what the future holds. Some of the applications reviewed are TRMM, applications to land surface parameter retrieval and the effects of weather systems on seaice concentration.