Abstract
The DISCOVER Project (${\underline{D}}istributed$ ${\underline{I}}nformation$ ${\underline{S}}ervices$ for ${\underline{C}}limate$ and ${\underline{O}}cean$ products and ${\underline{V}}isualizations$ for ${\underline{E}}arth$ ${\underline{R}}esearch$) is a NASA funded Earth Science REASoN project that strives to provide highly accurate, carefully calibrated, long-term climate data records and near-real-time ocean products suitable for the most demanding Earth research applications via easy-to-use display and data access tools. A key element of DISCOVER is the merging of data from the multiple sensors on multiple platforms into geophysical data sets consistent in both time and space. The project is a follow-on to the SSM/I Pathfinder and Passive Microwave ESIP projects which pioneered the simultaneous retrieval of sea surface temperature, surface wind speed, columnar water vapor, cloud liquid water content, and rain rate from SSM/I and TMI observations. The ocean products available through DISCOVER are derived from multi-sensor observations combined into daily products and a consistent multi-decadal climate time series. The DISCOVER team has a strong track record in identifying and removing unexpected sources of systematic error in radiometric measurements, including misspecification of SSM/I pointing geometry, the slightly emissive TMI antenna, and problems with the hot calibration source on AMSR-E. This in-depth experience with inter-calibration is absolutely essential for achieving our objective of merging multi-sensor observations into consistent data sets. Extreme care in satellite inter-calibration and commonality of geophysical algorithms is applied to all sensors. This presentation will introduce the DISCOVER products currently available from the web site, http://www.discover-earth.org and provide examples of the scientific application of both the diurnally corrected optimally interpolated global sea surface temperature product and the 4x-daily global microwave water vapor product.