A demonstration of the potential of Cryosat-2 to contribute to mesoscale observation

Cryosat-2 was designed for its primary scientific objectives, i.e. for cryosphere science. As far as oceanography is concerned, various mission design choices make it less accurate than missions designed to comply with ocean surface topography requirements such as Jason-2 or ENVISAT. Cryosat-2-specific errors are equivalent to more than 50% of the sea surface height variability over 40% of the oceans. Cryosat-2’s sampling pattern is also suboptimal for mesoscale observation because the satellite tracks from any consecutive period of 2 to 20 days (e.g. the most recent and most valuable data for near real time mesoscale observation) are aggregated in 500 km wide bands which are interleaved with 500 km wide observation gaps.     

Venus observations from ENVISAT–SCIAMACHY: Measurements and modeling

This work shows the capability of observing Venus with a sensor originally designed for Earth remote sensing. SCIAMACHY (SCanning Imaging Absorption spectroMeter for Atmospheric CHartographY), onboard ENVISAT, successfully observed visible and near-infrared spectra from the Venusian atmosphere. The Venus spectra were simulated using a line-by-line radiative transfer model. The single scattering approximation was applied in order to consider the effects of an approximately 20 km-thick haze layer above the main cloud deck, which was considered as a reflecting cloud located in the upper atmosphere of the planet. CO₂ absorption lines could be distinguished in both observed and simulated spectra and a good agreement between them was also found.     

DORIS系统自主在轨实时定轨的实现与精度分析

国家科技重大专项高分辨率空间对地观测项目的实施,对卫星平台的自主在轨实时定轨提出了新的需求。由法国发展的DORIS实时定轨系统虽已成功应用于多个对地观测平台,但该系统从未公布其原始数据和数据处理的技术细节,因此本文尝试利用DORIS地面主控站提供的ENVISAT标准格式多普勒数据,假设星上自主定轨时采用相同的数据,基于卡尔曼滤波算法实现（仿真）自主实时定轨。计算表明仅考虑简单的非球形引力模型,对于位置误差1km,速度误差1m/s的初始条件,2小时后滤波趋于稳定,滤波精度为十米量级,速度精度为厘米每秒级。为提高滤波计算效率,对坐标系统转换进行简化后,定轨精度仍在十米量级。基于DORIS仿真测量数据滤波计算表明,随着测量精度的提高和每圈观测弧段的增加,滤波计算的精度也会得到有效提高。     

The Stratospheric and Mesospheric NOy in the 2002–2004 Polar Winters as measured by MIPAS/ENVISAT

The Michelson Interferometer for Passive Atmospheric Sounding (MIPAS) on board ENVISAT, provided global (pole-to-pole, the polar night winter regions) measurements of nearly all constituents of the NO_y family (including NO, NO₂, HNO₃ and H₂O₅) from July 2002 to the end of March 2004 from the upper stratosphere up to the middle mesosphere. The inter-annual variability of the NO₂ and HNO₃ abundances in the Arctic and Antarctic winters from September 2002 through March 2004 was enormous with tremendous hemispheric asymmetry and extraordinary values in two winters. The origin of these variations and of the extreme measured values has been analyzed on the basis of the changing atmospheric dynamics (using the CH₄ tracer) and solar activity, including the extraordinary solar protons events of Oct–Nov 2003.