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This enhanced Level-2 (L2) product contains calibrated, geolocated, brightness temperatures acquired by the Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) radiometer during 6:00 a.m. descending and 6:00 p.m. ascending half-orbit passes. This product is derived from SMAP Level-1B (L1B) interpolated antenna temperatures. Backus-Gilbert optimal interpolation techniques are used to extract maximum information from SMAP antenna temperatures and convert them to brightness temperatures, which are posted to the 9 km Equal-Area Scalable Earth Grid, Version 2.0 (EASE-Grid 2.0) in a global cylindrical projection [available as the SPl1CTB_E product]. These 9-km brightness temperatures are then used to retrieve surface soil moisture posted on the 9-km grid [this SPL2SMP_E product].
SMAP Enhanced L2 Radiometer Half-Orbit 9 km EASE-Grid Soil Moisture, Version 4
This is the most recent version of these data.
Changes to this version include:
- Improved calibration methodology was applied to the Level-1B radiometer brightness temperatures.
- Improved land surface model outputs from the NASA Global Modeling and Assimilation Office (GMAO) were used to estimate the effective soil temperature used as input to Level-2 soil moisture geophysical inversion. This effective soil temperature is not to be confused with the physical soil temperature at a given depth (Choudhury et al., 1982).
- Improved retrieval performance of DCA (formerly known as MDCA or "the option 3" option algorithm in previous releases). DCA retrieves both soil moisture and vegetation optical depth (VOD or tau).
- Use of a new global 250-meter resolution soils database called SoilGrid250m available at https://openlandmap.org. Work is underway to address limited spatial anomalies of these soil property estimates at high latitudes over areas rich in organic soils.
- Data quality flags were updated and corrected where faulty.
- The baseline algorithm (SCA-V) remains unchanged.
For the full major and minor version history, go to https://nsidc.org/data/smap/data_versions.
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As a condition of using these data, you must cite the use of this data set using the following citation. For more information, see our Use and Copyright Web page.
O'Neill, P. E., S. Chan, E. G. Njoku, T. Jackson, R. Bindlish, and J. Chaubell. 2020. SMAP Enhanced L2 Radiometer Half-Orbit 9 km EASE-Grid Soil Moisture, Version 4. [Indicate subset used]. Boulder, Colorado USA. NASA National Snow and Ice Data Center Distributed Active Archive Center. doi: https://doi.org/10.5067/Q8J8E3A89923. [Date Accessed].Literature Citation
As a condition of using these data, we request that you acknowledge the author(s) of this data set by referencing the following peer-reviewed publication.
Chan, S., R. Bindlish, P. E. O'Neill, T. Jackson, E. G. Njoku, S. Dunbar, J. Chaubell, J. R. Piepmeier, S. Yueh, D. Entekhabi, A. Colliander, F. Chen, M. Cosh, T. Caldwell, J. Walker, A. Berg, H. McNairn, M. Thibeault, J. Martinez-Fernandez, F. Uldall, M. Seyfried, D. Bosch, P. Starks, C. Holifield -Collins, J. Prueger, R. Van der Velde, J. Asanuma, M. Palecki, E. E. Small, M. Zreda, J. Calvet, W. T. Crow, and Y. Kerr. 2018. Development and assessment of the SMAP enhanced passive soil moisture product, Remote Sensing of the Environment. 204. 931–941. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rse.2017.08.025
