Development of a network for Top Of Atmosphere Brightness Temperature Measurements at Fiducial Reference Measurements standard. A working group will be constituted with initial sites selections and roadmap toward the establishment of the network.
ESA study has kicked off in late November 2023 and we had a first progress meeting in January 2024 with CNES and JPL that are the partnering agencies that for the moment. They have committed to providing input data to the study from La Crau and Lake Tahoe sites respectively. There will be several deliverables during the study that will take
~18 to 24 months depending on progress and data availability. The most relevant would be the final report that would constitute the Roadmap towards an operational
TIRCalNet which should be available in 2026 Q3/4.
The initial work has been initiated with CNES performing a sensitivity study at La Crau Cal/val site with a radiometer provided by JPL. Analysis is focused on what uncertainties impact the ToA BT signal the most. For the moment the largest impact is attributed to the uncertainty of the ground emissivity. A better characterisation of the emissivity is planned in the near future by CNES. ESA are about to start a complementary study involving University of Leicester and Karlsruhe Institute of Technology experts to provide support to the CNES study in optimising the site setup design and also porting the design to potential other network candidates to provide a roadmap towards an operational network from a technical point of view.