Atmospheric correction of AMSR-E brightness temperatures for dry snow cover mapping

Differences between the brightness temperatures (spectral gradient) collected by the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer for EOS (AMSR-E) at 18.7 and 36.5 GHz are used to map the snow-covered area (SCA) over a region including the western U.S. The brightness temperatures are corrected to take into account for atmospheric effects by means of a simplified radiative transfer equation whose parameters are stratified using rawinsonde data collected from a few stations. The surface emissivity is estimated from the model, and the brightness temperatures at the surface are computed as the product of the surface temperature and the computed emissivity. The SCA derived from microwave data is compared with that obtained from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer for both cases of corrected and noncorrected brightness temperatures. The improvement to the SCA retrievals based on the corrected brightness temperatures shows an average value around 7%.