Resolution enhancement for microwave-based atmospheric sounding from geostationary orbits

The purpose of this study is to develop and evaluate techniques that improve the spatial resolution of the channels already selected in the preliminary studies for Geostationary Observatory for Microwave Atmospheric Soundings (GOMAS). Reference high resolution multifrequency brightness temperatures scenarios have been derived by applying radiative transfer calculation to the spatially and microphysically detailed output of meteorological events simulated by the University of Wisconsin-Nonhydrostatic Model System. Three approaches, Wiener filter, Super-resolution and Image-fusion have been applied to some representative GOMAS frequency channels to enhance the resolution of antenna temperatures. The Wiener filter improved resolution of the largely oversampled images by a factor 1.5-2.0 without introducing any penalty in the radiometric accuracy. Super-resolution, suitable for not largely oversampled images, improved resolution by a factor 1.5 but introducing an increased radiometric noise by a factor 1.4-2.5. The Image-fusion allows finally to further increase the spatial frequency of the images obtained by theWiener filter increasing the total resolution up to a factor 5.0 with an increased radiometric noise closely linked to the radiometric frequency and to the examined case study.