Circumpolar surface soil moisture and freeze/thaw surface status remote sensing products (version 4) with links to geotiff images and NetCDF files (2007-01 to 2013-12)

• Main Authors: Paulik, Christoph, Melzer, Thomas, Hahn, Sebastian, Bartsch, Annett, Heim, Birgit, Elger, Kirsten, Wagner, Wolfgang
• Format: Dataset
• Language: English
• Published: PANGAEA - Data Publisher for Earth & Environmental Science 2014
• Subjects: Uniform resource locator/link to file; File format; File size; File content; Satellite remote sensing; ESA Data User Element - Permafrost ESA-DUE-Permafrost; Kidd; permafrost
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.1594/pangaea.832153; https://doi.pangaea.de/10.1594/PANGAEA.832153

This dataset is a partial update of the ESA Data User Element (DUE) Permafrost Full Product Set (doi:10.1594/PANGAEA.780111).The ASCAT Surface Status as well as the Surface Soil Moisture (SSM) Product is derived from the ASCAT sensor onboard Metop satellite. The surface status (also called freeze/thaw information) is described in Naeimi et al. (2012). The soil moisture derivation algorithm is based on a change detection method initially proposed by Wagner et al. (1999). ASCAT SSM product is the result of an improved SSM retrieval algorithm developed at the Institute for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing (IPF) of the Vienna University of Technology (Naeimi et al., 2009). The SSM Product as defined in the DUE Permafrost project (Bartsch & Seifert 2012) is delivered as weekly average and with 25km spatial resolution. This average is derived on a daily basis for the preceding week in accordance with the DUE GlobSnow product definitions. The daily surface status information is valid for the given date. The circumpolar dataset covers the years 2007 - 2013 north of 50°N.The ASCAT Level 2 product including soil moisture data are produced by EUMETSAT in near-real time following the method developed and prototyped for EUMETSAT by the IPF. ASCAT data are distributed primarily via EUMETCast system and are available within about 2 hours after acquisition. Data are also accessible through EUMETSAT Data Centre.For integration into the Permafrost Information System ASCAT data are resampled to a Discrete Global Grid (DGG). The DGG is an adapted sinusoidal grid using an ellipsoid based on the GEM6 model (Kidd 2005).The soil moisture product also includes a quality flag which contains the number used measurements. Data are masked for frozen ground conditions also based on MetOp ASCAT. The frozen ground information (surface state flag) has been improved within the ESA STSE ALANIS project (http://www.alanis-methane.info) and is included in this dataset. Surface status information is provided for each single day.