Jacqueline Boutin¹, Jean-Luc Vergely², Stéphane Ferron², Laurent Bertino³, G Macelloni⁴, M Brogioni⁴, Matthias Drusch⁵, Marie-Laure Frery⁶, Eric Jeansou⁷ and Véronique Bruniquel⁷, (1)LOCEAN/CNRS, Paris, France, (2)ACRI-st, Guyancourt, France, (3)Nansen Environmental and Remote Sensing Center, Bergen, Norway, (4)Institute of Applied Physics, Microwave Remote Sensing Group, Fiorentino, Italy, (5)ESA-ESTEC, European Space Research and Technology Centre, Noordwijk, Netherlands, (6)CNES, Toulouse, France, (7)ACRI-ST, Toulouse, France