What is AATSR?
The Advanced Along-Track Scanning Radiometer (AATSR) is a space-borne instrument which makes the most precise measurements of global Sea Surface Temperature (SST) that are now achieved from space (0.3 K accuracy). The purpose is to provide the high levels of accuracy and stability required for climate research and modelling. AATSR SST data are also used increasingly for SST analyses, for operational oceanography and for weather forecasting.
The instrument itself is a dual-view, multi-channel, imaging radiometer with 1 km spatial resolution and a 512 km swath width. The instrument includes both thermal infrared, shortwave infrared and visible wavelength channels. The calibration for the thermal channels is especially accurate, comprising two onboard blackbodies. Thermal brightness temperatures are accurate to better than 0.05 °C and the visible images measure Earth reflectance to better than 1%.
Further details on the instrument can be found in the rest of this section.
The cheif AATSR products are the following (operational products are produced by ESA; scientific products are produced by ESA DUE porjects or by the AATSR science user community):
- Operational high quality medium resolution image data (1 km)
- Operational high accuracy SST data (better than 0.3 K)
- Operational Land Surface Temperature (LST) data
- Operational NDVI (not atmospherically corrected)
- Operational cloud masking
- Scientific aersol products including desert dust
- Scientific cloud parameterisation products
- Scientific snow cover product (in development)