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The Community Microwave Emission Modelling Platform (CMEM) has been developed by the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) as the forward operator for low frequency passive microwave brightness temperatures (from 1GHz to 20 GHz) of the surface. Up to date CMEM documentation is provided in the ESA contract report MS1TNP1: SMOS Global surface emission model (2009) de Rosnay et al 2019.
It is a new highly modular code providing I/O interfaces for the Numerical Weather Prediction Community. CMEM's physics is based on a range of State-Of-The-Art parametrisations, including those used in the L-Band Microwave Emission of the Biosphere (LMEB, Wigneron et al., 2007) and Land Surface Microwave Emission Model (LSMEM, Drusch et al., 2007). So, CMEM modularity allows considering different parametrisations of the soil dielectric constant as well as different soil approaches (either coherent of incoherent), different effective temperature, roughness, vegetation and atmospheric contribution opacity models.
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The SMOS satellite, launched on 2 November 2009, is the first instrument to provide global fields of L-band brightness temperature. SMOS brightness temperatures is used at the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) to investigate its use to analyse soil moisture through the Surface Data Assimilation System and to monitor ocean salinity. This is expected to improve the accuracy of initial conditions of the Numerical Weather Prediction (NWP) model. In turn, NWP products are of great importance for space agencies in order to derive the Level2 soil moisture and ocean salinity products. CMEM is used at ECMWF to monitor and assimilate the SMOS brightness temperature in the Integrated Forecast System (IFS).
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CMEM was originally developed at ECMWF for Numerical Weather Prediction applications, namely as a the forward operator for the assimilation of low frequency passive microwave observations (Holmes et al., 2008). CMEM has been extended to be a platform with modular Input/Output that include a range a physical parameterizations, some of which are also used in the Land Surface Microwave Emission Model (LSMEM) and the L-band Microwave Emission of the Biosphere (L-MEB). It comprises four modules for computing the contributions from soil, vegetation, snow and the atmosphere. The code is designed to be highly modular and for each microwave modeling component, a choice of several parameterizations are considered. More information in ESA contract report MS1TNP1: SMOS Global surface emission model (2009).in de Rosnay et al 2019.
References:
de Rosnay, P., J. Muñoz-Sabater, C. Albergel, L. Isaksen, S. English, M. Drusch, J.-P. Wigneron: "SMOS brightness temperature forward modelling and long term monitoring at ECMWF", 237 (Feb 2020) https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rse.2019.111424