Megha-Tropiques mission status
Résumé
The French-Indian Megha-Tropiques mission was launched in October 2011 from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota. Onboard the satellite, MADRAS is a conical scanning passive microwave radiometer with 9 channels from 18.6 GHz to 157 GHz dedicated mainly to the retrieval of rain over both land and ocean. The originality of the Megha-Tropiques mission is not so much in the capabilities of the MADRAS instrument which are similar to a SSM/I, but it is in its peculiar low inclination orbit (20°) combined with a large swath (~1700 km) which gives an incomparable revisit over the 23° S-23° N region. The first data received from MADRAS show that the instrument, regardless of some data transmission difficulties, is giving very good quality brightness temperatures with very low noise level even at 89 and 157 GHz. The presentation will give a brief review of the mission status and of the connected scientific activities regarding the rain retrieval algorithms, for both instantaneous products (Level 2) and the 1 degree-1 day product (Level 4). The presentation will also give a brief overview of the algorithm validation activities (microphysics) and products validation (rain) which will be detailed in separate presentations and posters.