A Community Session at the 2023 IEEE International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium (IGARSS 2023) in Pasadena, California, USA, 16 - 21 July, 2023 is dedicated to CIMR:
CCS.146: Preparing for the Copernicus Imaging Microwave Radiometer (CIMR)
The Copernicus Imaging Microwave Radiometer (CIMR) expansion mission is one of the six Copernicus Expansion Missions currently being implemented by the European Space Agency and the European Commission. CIMR will provide high-spatial resolution microwave imaging radiometry measurements and derived products with global coverage and sub-daily revisit in the polar regions and adjacent seas to address Copernicus user needs. The primary instrument is a conically scanning low-frequency, high spatial resolution multi-channel microwave radiometer. Two satellites are being implemented (to be launched sequentially) each with a design lifetime of 7.5 years and sufficient fuel to last for up to 12 years (thus providing up to ~20 years of continuous data) with a first launch anticipated in 2028/29. A dawn-dusk orbit has been selected to fly in coordination with MetOp-SG-B1 allowing collocated data from both missions to be obtained in the Polar regions within +/-10 minutes. A conical scanning approach utilizing a large 8m diameter deployable mesh reflector with an incidence angle of 55 degrees results in a large swath width of ~2000 km. This approach ensures 95% global coverage each day with a single satellite and no hole at the pole in terms of coverage. Channels centred at L-, C-, X-, Ku- and Ka-band are dual polarised with effective spatial resolution of < 60 km, ≤ 15 km, ≤ 15 km and < 5 km (both Ka- and Ku-band with a goal of 4 km) respectively. Measurements are obtained using both a forward scan and a backward scan arc. On board processing is implemented to provide robustness against radio frequency interference and enables the computation of modified 3rd and 4th Stokes parameters for all channels. This solution allows many Level-2 geophysical products to be derived over all earth surfaces including sea ice (e.g. concentration, thickness, drift, ice type, ice surface temperature) sea surface temperature, sea surface salinity, wind vector over the ocean surface, snow parameters, soil moisture, land surface temperature, vegetation indices, and atmospheric water parameters amongst others. In preparation for the CIMR mission, this session will focus on encouraging international and cross-disciplinary collaborative activities in the cryosphere, ocean, land and atmosphere domains.