CLIMACS: design of a high radiometric resolution SAR for land and sea ice applications

CLIMACS (Climate studies of Land surfaces and Ice using Microwave ACtive Sensing) is a synthetic aperture radar and is intended to be an element of a mission dedicated to global observation of land surfaces and ice. CLIMACS will provide relevant information for the studies related to climate change. In addition further expected applications are in the areas of disaster monitoring, ice reconnaissance and forest monitoring. In order to obtain valuable geophysical products for these applications, SAR images with modest spatial resolution but very high radiometric accuracy and high temporal sampling are desirable.