Spatial resolution on the ground was 2.5 deg in longitude and latitude (about 250 km circle).
They provided measurements of the temperature of the troposphere and lower stratosphere until 1998, when the first AMSU was deployed.
[2] In the table, "vertical polarization near nadir" means that the E-vector is parallel to the scan direction at nadir, and "horizontal polarization" means the orthogonal direction.
Table 1 Radiometric characteristics of the Microwave Sounding Unit The MSU was used by NOAA for meteorological analyses in combination with two infrared instruments, [3] and sometimes alone, for post-analysis of weather events [4] and other atmospheric phenomena such as waves.
[5] [6] MSU and AMSU together provide a long data record and have been used for tracking atmospheric temperature trends (see: Microwave Sounding Unit temperature measurements).