Temperature and salinity dependence of sea surface emissivity in the thermal infrared

Abstract

Abstract Aircraft and ground‐based interferometer measurements are used to investigate the dependence of sea surface emissivity on water temperature and salinity in the infrared spectral region. The effect of dissolved salts is found to be small and in line with previous studies, whereas temperature (often neglected in current emissivity models) has a greater impact. The influence on satellite sea surface temperature (SST) retrievals is found to be significant for high‐resolution infrared sounders: neglecting a temperature‐dependent emissivity leads to systematic errors in SST of as much as 0.6 K depending on channel frequency. © Crown copyright, 2005. Royal Meteorological Society