Atmospheric Effects on InSAR Measurements and Their Mitigation

Area of Science:

• Geodesy
• Remote Sensing
• Earth Science

Background:

• Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR) is crucial for Earth surface observation, mapping topography and deformations.
• Atmospheric variations significantly corrupt InSAR measurements due to radar signal propagation delays.
• Understanding and mitigating atmospheric effects is vital for InSAR data reliability.

Approach:

• Systematic review of research on atmospheric effects in repeat-pass InSAR.
• Introduction to the fundamental principles of atmospheric influences on InSAR.
• Discussion of studies characterizing atmospheric effect magnitudes, spectra, and statistical properties globally.

Key Points:

• Atmospheric effects introduce spatial and temporal variability impacting InSAR accuracy.
• Characterization includes global magnitudes, spectral analysis, isotropy, and statistical distributions.
• Mitigation strategies encompass Persistent Scatterer InSAR (PSInSAR), interferogram modeling, and external data integration.

Conclusions:

• Various methods exist to mitigate atmospheric distortions in InSAR data.
• External data sources like GPS, meteorological data, MODIS, and MERIS aid atmospheric calibration.
• Successful examples demonstrate the utility of MODIS and MERIS for InSAR atmospheric correction.