The EUMETSAT Metop-B satellite with onboard the Advanced Scatterometer (ASCAT) has been successfully launched on September 17, 2012. ASCAT-B onboard Metop-B is identical to the already operational scatterometer ASCAT-A onboard Metop-A which was launched in 2006. KNMI has further developed an ocean calibration method for ASCAT-A, based on Numerical Weather Prediction (NWP) wind inputs, the so-ca...

On September 17, 2012 the Metop-B satellite with onboard the Advanced Scatterometer (ASCAT-B) has been successfully launched. For the ASCAT-B scatterometer, corrections are derived with the use of the NWP ocean calibration (NOC). These corrections are used in the ASCAT wind data processor in order to obtain high-quality winds. The NOC-calibrated ASCAT-B wind product is examined and its quality ...

The Advanced Scatterometer (ASCAT) onboard the Metop satellite series is designed to measure the ocean surface wind vectors globally. Generally, ASCAT provides wind products at excellent quality. The quality of the Advanced Scatterometer (ASCAT) derived winds is known to be generally degraded with increasing values of the inversion residual or maximum likelihood estimator (MLE). In the current ...

Introduction Conclusions References Tables Figures ◭ ◮ ◭ ◮ Back Close Full Screen / Esc Abstract Introduction Conclusions References Tables Figures ◭ ◮ ◭ ◮ Back Close Full Screen / Esc Abstract The new scatterometer Advanced SCATterometer (ASCAT) onboard MetOp-A satellite provides surface wind speed and direction over global ocean with a spatial resolution of 25 km square over two swaths of 550...

This paper describes the first outcomes of an activity aiming at validating the H-SAF soil moisture products derived from METOP-ASCAT data. For this purpose, an extensive comparison between SMOS and ASCAT derived soil moisture retrievals has been accomplished by considering the 25 km resolution ASCAT products and the SMOS level 2 products. Both Europe and Northern Africa have been considered an...

The first products derived over France in 2010 from the L-band brightness temperatures (Tb) measured by the SMOS (Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity) satellite, launched in November 2009, were compared with the surface soil moisture (SSM) estimates produced by the C-band Advanced Scatterometer, ASCAT, launched in 2006 on board METOP-A. SMOS and ASCAT SSM products were compared with the simulation...

We present an allele-specific copy number analysis of the in vivo breast cancer genome. We describe a unique bioinformatics approach, ASCAT (allele-specific copy number analysis of tumors), to accurately dissect the allele-specific copy number of solid tumors, simultaneously estimating and adjusting for both tumor ploidy and nonaberrant cell admixture. This allows calculation of "ASCAT profiles...

The ASCAT instrument onboard MetOp is a real aperture vertically polarized C-band radar with high radiometric stability. It has two sets of three fixed fan beam antennas, each set pointing at either side of the sub-satellite track. Because of the similarities of both the ERS (scatterometer) and ASCAT measurement systems, we have the opportunity to use the ERS geophysical model function (GMF) as...

An important part of the scatterometer wind data processing is the quality control (QC). This report shows the implementation of a new scatterometer QC procedure, based on a comprehensive analysis of the wind inversion residual, which significantly improves the effectiveness of the wind data QC. The method is applied on the Advanced Scatterometer (ASCAT) onboard Metop-A, but is generic and can ...

The assessment and validation of the quality of satellite scatterometer vector winds is challenging under increased subcell wind variability conditions, since reference wind sources such as buoy winds or model output represent very different spatial scales from those resolved by scatterometers (i.e., increased representativeness error). In this paper, moored buoy wind time series are used to as...