SLSTR: a high accuracy dual scan temperature radiometer for sea and land surface monitoring from space

Abstract

SLSTR is a high accuracy infrared radiometer which will be embarked in the Earth low-orbit Sentinel 3 operational GMES mission. SLSTR is an improved version of the previous AATSR and ATSR-1/2 instruments which have flown respectively on Envisat and ERS-1/2 ESA missions. SLSTR will provide data continuity with respect to these previous missions but with a substantial improvement due to its higher swaths (750 km in dual view and 1400 km in single view) which should permit global coverage of SST and LST measurements (at 1 km of spatial resolution in IR channels) with daily revisit time, useful for climatological and meteorological applications. Two more SWIR channels and a higher spatial resolution in the VIS/SWIR channels (0.5 km) are also implemented for a better clouds/aerosols screening. Two further additional channels for global scale fire monitoring are present at the same time as the other nominal channels.