Remote sensing of atmosphere and ocean from space: models, instruments and techniques

The idea to held the first International Summer School on Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences (ISSAOS) in L’Aquila was a sort of coupe de foudre during a Spring warm day. Nothing romantic, of course, but simply timely: during an unexpected discussion we realized, on one hand, the emergence of a larger and larger remote sensing activity at the University of L’Aquila and, on the other hand, the national academic interest to start a cycle of International Summer Schools on atmospheric and oceanic physics. The basic ingredients were soon identified: a topic of general scientific interests, a high quality selection of lecturers and, last but not least, a pleasant venue. ISSAOS-2000 was in the period September 4-8 at the College of Engineering of the University of L’Aquila, amazingly placed on a hill at about 1000 m. The city of L’Aquila offered the historical landscape of five days of full immersion. More than 70 students responded to the call and agreed to follow more than 35 hours of lectures. The conclusive social dinner, amused by spontaneous music, was the deserved prize for all participants and organizers. The primary audience of ISSAOS-2000 was constituted by graduate students in remote sensing and geosciences, Ph.D. or equivalent students, remote sensing researchers specialist in one single field, willing to have a basic understanding of spaceborne remote sensing capabilities for atmospheric and ocean remote sensing with current established techniques and a research perspective. This book is essentially the collection of the lectures, given during ISSAOS-2000 by the lecturers coming both from Europe and USA. Its goal is to provide a broad panorama of spaceborne remote sensing techniques, at both microwave and visible-infrared bands and by both active and passive sensors, for the retrieval of atmospheric and oceanic parameters. A significant emphasis is given to the physical modelling background, instrument potential and limitations, inversion methods and applications. Topics on international remote sensing programs and assimilation techniques into numerical weather forecast models are also touched in the last chapter. Since the main purpose of this book is to offer a well selected introductory material, each contribution is maintained within a limited number of pages, giving emphasis to the basic concepts and to an appropriate and abundant list of references. Even though this book is published after almost two years with respect to the end of ISSAOS-2000, we believe it represents a valuable sample of the state-of-the art on remote sensing of the atmosphere and ocean. In this regard, on January 2002 we asked the contributors to include up-to-date concepts and references within their sections. As mentioned before, the organization of an International Summer School is a complex task, especially at its first edition. We acknowledge the financial contribution to ISSAOS-2000 coming from: the Italian Space Agency (ASI), the Science and Technology Park of Abruzzo (PSTd’A), the IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society – Central and South Italy Chapter, the Department of Electrical Engineering and the Department of Physics of the University of L’Aquila, the Italian Remote Sensing Association (AIT) and the Italian Inter-University Centre for Atmosphere and Hydrophere Physics (CIRFAI). We are also grateful to the Dean of the College of Engineering of the University of L’Aquila for the use of rooms and facilities. The first personal acknowledgment goes to Simona Zoffoli of the Italian Space Agency (ASI) who enthusiastically supported the ISSAOS-2000 idea. Errico Picciotti, Tonia Fortunato, Adelaide Memmo and Fabrizio Mancini were irreplaceable for their support and continuous availability before and during ISSAOS-2000. A further acknowledgment is due to Ortensia Ferella, Pierlugi Strinella and Daniele Masoni of the International Science Services who have made available all their professionalism for the organization of the meeting. A very dedicated and warm acknowledgment goes to Simona Marinangeli, responsible for the editorial format of this manuscript: her effective and efficient work has made this hopefully important publication possible.