SMOS mains results over land after 4 years in orbit

• Main Authors: Kerr, Yann H., Wigneron, Jean-Pierre, Ferrazzoli, P., Richaume, Philippe, Waldteufel, P., Mialon, Arnaud, Ahmad, Al Bitar, Bircher, Simone, Cabot, François, Choné, Audrey, Leroux, Delphine, Molero, Beatriz, Parrens, Marie, Rodriguez‐fernandez, Nemesio, Al Yaari, Amen, Grant, Jennifer, Delwart, Steven, Drusch, Matthias, Mecklenburg, Susanne
• Other Authors: Centre d'études spatiales de la biosphère (CESBIO), Institut de Recherche pour le Développement (IRD)-Université Toulouse III - Paul Sabatier (UT3), Université Fédérale Toulouse Midi-Pyrénées-Université Fédérale Toulouse Midi-Pyrénées-Institut national des sciences de l'Univers (INSU - CNRS)-Observatoire Midi-Pyrénées (OMP), Université Fédérale Toulouse Midi-Pyrénées-Université Fédérale Toulouse Midi-Pyrénées-Institut national des sciences de l'Univers (INSU - CNRS)-Centre National d'Études Spatiales Toulouse (CNES)-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)-Météo-France -Centre National d'Études Spatiales Toulouse (CNES)-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)-Météo-France -Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)-Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement (INRAE), Interactions Sol Plante Atmosphère (UMR ISPA), Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique (INRA)-Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Sciences Agronomiques de Bordeaux-Aquitaine (Bordeaux Sciences Agro), Lund University Lund, Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research WSL, Agence Spatiale Européenne = European Space Agency (ESA)
• Format: Conference Object
• Language: English
• Published: HAL CCSD 2014
• Subjects: mission SMOS; analyse de données; [SDE.MCG]Environmental Sciences/Global Changes; [SDU.STU]Sciences of the Universe [physics]/Earth Sciences; [SPI.SIGNAL]Engineering Sciences [physics]/Signal and Image processing; Sea ice
• Online Access: https://hal.inrae.fr/hal-02744022

International audience The SMOS mission was launched in November 2009 and allows measuring the surface soil moisture over continental land, covering the entire surface in 3 days. The multi-angular algorithm also enables to estimate the vegetation opacity which is directly related to the water content of the canopy. The algorithm also distinguishes between low vegetation where most of the signal emanates from the leaf and stems of the vegetation and the forests where the signal is mainly linked to the branch biomass at L band. ESA’s DPGS (European Space Agency’s Data Processing Ground Segment) has been delivering the so called Level 2 products, consisting in ½ orbits data for both products since launch. The CNES (Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales) has developed the CATDS (Centre Aval de Traitement des Données SMOS) ground segment that now provides spatial and temporal synthesis products (referred to as Level 3 products) enabling to better estimate the vegetation opacity ( as well as soil moisture and brightness temperature over land). After now several years of availability, the soil moisture product is rather robust but the vegetation opacity, either obtained at level 2 or 3 still suffers from several flaws, even if it looks promising. Work was also performed on the improvement of dielectric constant modelling either on modelling site or ground measurements. A particular emphasis was done or organic rich soils. A number of higher level products have been developed and tested, ranging from sea ice thickness to drought indices root zone soil moisture and freeze indices. In this presentation we will look at the products and how they are obtained and validated as well as the main results obtained over both low vegetation and forested areas.