Brightness Temperature Retrieval using Direct Broadcast Data from the Passive Microwave Imager on Aqua Satellite

We have constructed a level-1 processor to generate brightness temperatures using the direct-broadcast data from the passive microwave radiometer onboard Aqua satellite. Although 50-minute half-orbit data, called a granule, are being routinely produced by global data centers, to our knowledge, this is the first attempt to process 10-minute long direct-broadcast (DB) data. We found that the processor designed for a granule needs modification to apply to the DB data. The modification includes the correction to path number, the selection of land mask and the manipulation of dummy scans. Pixel-to-pixel comparison with a reference indicates the difference in brightness temperature of about 0.2 K rms and less than 0.05 K mean. The difference comes from the different length of data between 50-minute granule and about 10-minute DB data. In detail, due to the short data length, DB data do not always have correct cold sky mirror count. The DB processing system is automated to enable the near-real time generation of brightness temperatures within 5 minutes after downlink. Through this work, we would be able to enhance the use of AMSR-E data, thus serving the objective of direct-broadcast.