National Snow & Ice Data Center Distributed Active Archive Center

nasa-nsidcdaac-0233

SMEX02 QuikSCAT/SeaWinds Backscatter Data, Iowa

This data set includes data collected over the Soil Moisture Experiment 2002 (SMEX02) area of Iowa, USA, during June and August, 2002. The SeaWinds scatterometer on NASA's QuikScat satellite collected bacscatter data that can be used to infer vegetation and soil moisture. SeaWinds uses a rotating dish antenna with two spot beams that sweep in a circular pattern. The antenna radiates microwave pulses at a frequency of 13.4 gigahertz across broad regions on Earth's surface. Data are provided in binary arrays, digital images, and video (.avi) files, and are available via FTP. These data were collected as part of a validation study for the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer - Earth Observing System (AMSR-E). AMSR-E is a mission instrument launched aboard NASA's Aqua Satellite on 04 May 2002. AMSR-E validation studies linked to SMEX are designed to evaluate the accuracy of AMSR-E soil moisture data. Specific validation objectives include assessing and refining soil moisture algorithm performance; verifying soil moisture estimation accuracy; investigating the effects of vegetation, surface temperature, topography, and soil texture on soil moisture accuracy; and determining the regions that are useful for AMSR-E soil moisture measurements.

http://nsidc.org/data/NSIDC-0233

Identified by : NSIDC-0233

This dataset was released on May 20, 2004.

The time range for this dataset is June 01, 2002 to August 21, 2002.

The spatial range for this dataset is 39° to 45° latitude, and -98° to -89° longitude. map (center)

DOI : 10.5067/2ZWKUTKFY6II
Also known as :

• dataset oai:nsidc/NSIDC-0233 (nsidc lexicon)