Impact of the Faraday rotation on the SMOS measurements over the dome C test site: A semi-empirical study

With the development of present and future low-frequency microwave missions (SMOS, Aquarius and SMAP), the need arises to estimate the effects of the ionosphere on the propagation of the electromagnetic waves. In this paper a methodology for assessing the contribution of the Faraday rotation to uncertainties in SMOS measurements over Antarctica is proposed. Particularly real TEC data and advanced geomagnetic filed model were used to compute the Faraday rotation. The obtained values demonstrate that the impact on the measured SMOS brightness temperature is in general very low reaching a maximum value of 0.2K.