Global measurements of sea surface temperature, wind speed and atmospheric water content from satellite microwave radiometry

The Scanning Multichannel Microwave Radiometer (SMMR) was launched on the Seasat and Nimbus 7 satellites in 1978. The SMMR has the ability to measure sea surface temperature and wind speed with the aid of microwaves. In addition, the instrument was designed to measure water vapor and cloud liquid water with better spatial resolution than previous microwave radiometers, and to make sea-ice measurements with higher precision. A description is presented of the results of global analyses of sea surface temperature, wind speed, water vapor, and cloud liquid water, taking into account data provided by the SMMR on the Seasat satellite. It is found that the SMMR data show good self-consistency, and can usefully measure global distributions of sea surface temperatures, surface winds, water vapor, and cloud liquid water.