One of its prime functions, useful for both military and civilian needs, is to monitor sea ice, much in the manner of the ESMR discussed above. Use this as a framework to follow ice variations in the Arctic in a temporal animation at this Norwegian Web site . I uses several of its channels to determine brightness temperatures over land and sea. Travel times for the round-trip are the measured parameter. We can operate lidar instruments as profiliers and as scanners, day and night.
Light penetrates certain targets, so that one prime use is to assess tree canopy conditions.
Oil slicks respond in this way, and chlorophyll in sealife also fluoresces. It monitored clouds and measured atmospheric particles. We have come to the end of this Section, hoping that you have come to the realization that the microwave region of the spectrum can do many useful things, besides cook your food. Radar, in particular, is now a mainstay for both civilian and military space observations, being invaluable because of its independence from most weather conditions. As experience is gained, we are learning how to conduct feature classifications offering much the same information content as extracted from Visible and Near-IR imagery.