FOAM Emissivity Modelling with Foam Properties Tuned by Frequency and Polarization

We model the sea foam emissivity at frequencies from 1 to 89 GHz. This model is part of the work done by an international science team to develop a radiative transfer model of reference quality for the ocean surface emissivity from L band to infrared frequencies. A study of the sensitivity to different foam properties (foam layer thickness and upper limit of the foam void fraction) guided the effort to tune the foam emissivity model by frequency and polarization. The results show that the differences between simulated and observed brightness temperatures decrease when using the tuned foam model.