nca3-seasonal-surface-soil-moisture-trends-activity-2

Inputs: Radiometer-based products from: • SSM/I (July 1987–2007) • TMI (1998–2008) • AMSR-E (July 2002–2010) Scatterometer-based products from: • ERS-1/2 (July 1991–May 2006) • ASCAT (2007–2010). First, passive microwave soil moisture retrievals from the Scanning Multichannel Microwave Radiometer (SMMR), the Special Sensor Microwave Imager (SSM/I), and the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission microwave imager (TMI) instruments were scaled to the climatology of the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer — Earth Observing System (AMSR-E) derived product and then all four were combined into a single merged passive microwave product. Second, active microwave soil moisture estimates from the European Remote Sensing (ERS) Scatterometer instrument were scaled to the climatology of the Advanced Scatterometer (ASCAT) derived estimates. Both were combined into a merged active microwave product. Finally, the two merged products were rescaled to a common globally available reference soil moisture dataset provided by a land surface model (GLDAS-1-Noah) and then blended into a single passive/active product. The authors performed a trend analysis based on the merged microwave-based surface soil moisture dataset (SM-MW).

This activity resulted in the following :

• figure 3.3: Seasonal Surface Soil Moisture Trends was derived from dataset Soil Moisture Microwave

Notes : NASA data from AMSR-E can be obtained from NSIDC DAAC. Blending of the active and passive data sets was based on their respective sensitivity to vegetation density.