Joint estimation of the atmospheric temperature profile and the land-surface emissivity based on satellite measurements in the microwave band

Questions concerning the meteorological interpretation of data from satellite microwave measurements of outgoing thermal radiation from the Earth-atmosphere system are discussed. The problem of joint estimation of the vertical atmospheric temperature distribution and the land-surface emissivity based on numerical solution of the radiation transport equation is examined. The interdependence of the errors in estimates of the components of this nonlinear problem is studied. It is shown that the error in the temperature estimates contains a component which depends on the error in the emissivity, due to the accuracy of the initial approximation of the required temperature profile. The importance of the role of a priori information about the land-surface temperature is highlighted, An effective algorithm for constructing a nonlinear estimate of the temperature is suggested, which filters out the errors generated by the error in the emissivity.