Microwave Sounding Unit (MSU)

The Microwave Sounding Unit measures four microwave channels in the 5.5 millimeter oxygen region (see Table 2 for further details). The three latter channels contribute sounding information from three regions of the atmosphere: 700 hPa, 300 hPa and 90 hPa. The scanning is from the sun side towards the darker side of the satellite path, that means away from the sun side of the spacecraft. That will be a scan from west towards the east on an ascending node (PM).

One scan line will be covered continuously in 25.6 seconds and contain 11 cells during one scan (1.84 seconds for each step). The nominal horizontal resolution at nadir is 109 km.

MSU channel characteristics