Initial Results of an Airborne Light-Weight L-Band Radiometer

This paper presents the description and first results on the performance of a light-weight airborne L-band radiometer. This radiometer will be used in the SMOS CAL/VAL activities in the REMEDHUS site (Salamanca, Spain). First, a brief description of the overall system is presented. The first results obtained during a field experiment over the Ebro river mouth are then presented. These include flights over the sea shore (fresh and sea water) and land (dry and irrigated rice fields). This field experiment has also served to test the aircraft and the data processing algorithms that will be used in future campaigns with PAU-ORA, a reduced airborne demonstrator version of the PAU instrument.