Correction of SMOS data in coastal area of South China Sea based on land contamination analysis

For SMOS data, significant errors exist in coastal areas because of the contamination by the nearby land. In this paper, the analysis of SMOS brightness temperature (TB) data in coastal area of South China Sea (SCS) reveals a decreasing trend with the increase of the distance to coast. A SMOS TB measurement model according to geophysical parameters and SMOS/MIRAS antenna array is established. The simulation shows that TB is large within 40 km since land is much warmer than ocean and is observed by the mainlobe of the antenna array. Then the simulation result of land contamination is used for correction of SMOS measured TB data in coastal area of SCS. Then the corrected TB is applied for sea surface salinity (SSS) retrieval, which reduces SSS outliers and improves the accuracy of SSS in coastal area of SCS.