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Assessment of the SMAP Passive Soil Moisture ProductThe National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) satellite mission was launched on January 31, 2015. The observatory was developed to provide global mapping of high-resolution soil moisture and freeze-thaw state every two to three days using an L-band (active) radar and an L-band (passive) radiometer. After an irrecoverable hardware failure of the radar on July 7, 2015, the radiometer-only soil moisture product became the only operational Level 2 soil moisture product for SMAP. The product provides soil moisture estimates posted on a 36 kilometer Earth-fixed grid produced using brightness temperature observations from descending passes. Within months after the commissioning of the SMAP radiometer, the product was assessed to have attained preliminary (beta) science quality, and data were released to the public for evaluation in September 2015. The product is available from the NASA Distributed Active Archive Center at the National Snow and Ice Data Center. This paper provides a summary of the Level 2 Passive Soil Moisture Product (L2_SM_P) and its validation against in situ ground measurements collected from different data sources. Initial in situ comparisons conducted between March 31, 2015 and October 26, 2015, at a limited number of core validation sites (CVSs) and several hundred sparse network points, indicate that the V-pol Single Channel Algorithm (SCA-V) currently delivers the best performance among algorithms considered for L2_SM_P, based on several metrics. The accuracy of the soil moisture retrievals averaged over the CVSs was 0.038 cubic meter per cubic meter unbiased root-mean-square difference (ubRMSD), which approaches the SMAP mission requirement of 0.040 cubic meter per cubic meter.
Document ID
20170002025
Acquisition Source
Goddard Space Flight Center
Document Type
Reprint (Version printed in journal)
Authors
Chan, Steven K.
(Jet Propulsion Lab., California Inst. of Tech. Pasadena, CA, United States)
Bindlish, Rajat
(Science Systems and Applications, Inc. Lanham, MD, United States)
O'Neill, Peggy E.
(NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Greenbelt, MD United States)
Njoku, Eni
(Jet Propulsion Lab., California Inst. of Tech. Pasadena, CA, United States)
Jackson, Tom
(Department of Agriculture Beltsville, MD, United States)
Colliander, Andreas
(Jet Propulsion Lab., California Inst. of Tech. Pasadena, CA, United States)
Chen, Fan
(Science Systems and Applications, Inc. Lanham, MD, United States)
Burgin, Mariko
(Jet Propulsion Lab., California Inst. of Tech. Pasadena, CA, United States)
Dunbar, Scott
(Jet Propulsion Lab., California Inst. of Tech. Pasadena, CA, United States)
Piepmeier, Jeffrey
(NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Greenbelt, MD United States)
Yueh, Simon
(Jet Propulsion Lab., California Inst. of Tech. Pasadena, CA, United States)
Entekhabi, Dara
(Massachusetts Inst. of Tech. Cambridge, MA, United States)
Cosh, Michael H.
(Department of Agriculture Beltsville, MD, United States)
Caldwell, Todd
(Texas Univ. Austin, TX, United States)
Walker, Jeffrey
(Monash Univ. Clayton, Australia)
Wu, Xiaoling
(Monash Univ. Clayton, Australia)
Berg, Aaron
(Guelph Univ. Ontario, Canada)
Rowlandson, Tracy
(Guelph Univ. Ontario, Canada)
Pacheco, Anna
(Agriculture Canada Ottawa, Ontario, Canada)
McNairn, Heather
(Agriculture Canada Ottawa, Ontario, Canada)
Thibeault, Marc
(National Commission of Space Activities Buenos Aires, Argentina)
Martinez-Fernandez, Jose
(Universidad de Salamanca Salamanca, Spain)
Gonzalez-Zamora, Angel
(Universidad de Salamanca Salamanca, Spain)
Seyfried, Mark
(Agricultural Research Service Boise, ID, United States)
Bosch, David
(Agricultural Research Service (ARS) Tifton, GA, United States)
Starks, Patrick
(Agricultural Research Service (ARS) El Reno, OK, United States)
Goodrich, David
(Agricultural Research Service Tucson, AZ, United States)
Prueger, John
(Agricultural Research Service Ames, IA, United States)
Palecki, Michael
(National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Asheville, NC, United States)
Small, Eric E.
(Colorado Univ. Boulder, CO, United States)
Zreda, Marek
(Arizona Univ. Tucson, AZ, United States)
Calvet, Jean-Christophe
(Centre National de Recherches Meteorologiques Toulouse, France)
Crow, Wade T.
(Department of Agriculture Beltsville, MD, United States)
Kerr, Yann
(Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales Toulouse, France)
Date Acquired
March 7, 2017
Publication Date
May 25, 2016
Publication Information
Publication: IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing
Publisher: IEEE
Volume: 54
Issue: 8
e-ISSN: 1558-0644
Subject Category
Earth Resources And Remote Sensing
Report/Patent Number
GSFC-E-DAA-TN39612
Funding Number(s)
OTHER: KJR-209
Distribution Limits
Public
Copyright
Other
Keywords
passive
soil moisture
freeze-thaw

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