SMAP L2 Radiometer Half-Orbit 36 km EASE-Grid Soil Moisture, Version 7
Data set id:
SPL2SMP
DOI: 10.5067/F1TZ0CBN1F5N
There is a more recent version of these data.
Version Summary
Version Summary
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/version-history
- 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/version-history
Overview
This Level-2 (L2) soil moisture product provides estimates of global land surface conditions retrieved by the Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) passive microwave radiometer during 6:00 a.m. descending and 6:00 p.m. ascending half-orbit passes. SMAP L-band brightness temperatures are resampled to an Earth-fixed, global, cylindrical 36 km Equal-Area Scalable Earth Grid, Version 2.0 (EASE-Grid 2.0) [and made available as the SPL1CTB product], and the gridded brightness temperatures are then used to derive gridded soil moisture data.
Parameter(s):
SURFACE SOIL MOISTURE
Platform(s):
SMAP
Sensor(s):
SMAP L-BAND RADIOMETER
Data Format(s):
HDF5
Temporal Coverage:
- 31 March 2015 to 28 October 2021
Temporal Resolution:
- 49 minute
Spatial Resolution:
- 36 km
- 36 km
Spatial Reference System(s):
- WGS 84 / NSIDC EASE-Grid 2.0 GlobalEPSG:6933
Spatial Coverage:
- N:85.044S:-85.044E:180W:-180
Blue outlined yellow areas on the map below indicate the spatial coverage for this data set.
Data Access & Tools
This data set has been retired. There is a more recent version of these data.
Documentation
User Guide
ATBDs
General Resources
Quality Assessment Reports
Product Specification Documents
Help Articles
General Questions & FAQs
This article covers frequently asked questions about the NASA NSIDC DAAC's Earthdata cloud migration project and what it means to data users.
SMAP data files contain rich quality information that can be useful for many data users. The retrieval quality flag and surface flag bit values and interpretations are documented in the respective product Data Fields pages of the user guides for these data products
SMAP Ancillary data sets are used to produce SMAP Level-1, -2, -3, and -4 standard data products.
The following table describes both the required and actual latencies for the different SMAP radiometer data sets. Latency is defined as the time (# days, hh:mm:ss) from data acquisition to product generation.
This short article describes the customization services available for SMAP data using Earthdata Search.
The NASA National Snow and Ice Data Center Distributed Active Archive Center (NSIDC DAAC) is migrating its primary data access from its legacy, on-premises archive to the NASA Earthdata Cloud.
How to Articles
Many NSIDC DAAC data sets can be accessed using NSIDC DAAC's Data Access Tool. This tool provides the ability to search and filter data with spatial and temporal constraints using a map-based interface.Users have the option to:
To convert HDF5 files into binary format you will need to use the h5dump utility, which is part of the HDF5 distribution available from the HDF Group. How you install HDF5 depends on your operating system.
The following are instructions on how to import and geolocate SMAP Level-1C HDF5 data in ENVI.
Testing notes
Software: ENVI
Software version: 5.3 and above. If using version 5.3, service pack 5.3.1 is needed.
Platform: Windows 7
The NASA Earthdata Cloud is the NASA cloud-based archive of Earth observations. It is hosted by Amazon Web Services (AWS). Learn how to find and access NSIDC DAAC data directly in the cloud.
All data from the NASA National Snow and Ice Data Center Distributed Active Archive Center (NSIDC DAAC) is directly accessible through our HTTPS file system using Wget or curl. This article provides basic command line instructions for accessing data using this method.
This article highlights the NSIDC DAAC data sets available with customization options and outlines a workflow for searching, ordering, and customizing data in NASA Earthdata Search. This approach is ideal for users who want to download data to their local machine.
NASA Worldview is a map interface that allows users to interactively browse imagery, create visualizations, and download the underlying data.
NASA's Global Imagery Browse Services (GIBS) provides up to date, full resolution imagery for selected NSIDC DAAC data sets.