A paper titled “Near‐real‐time one‐kilometre Soil Moisture Active Passive soil moisture data product” co-authored by ESSIC/CISESS Assistant Research Scientist Jifu Yin was recently published by Hydrological Processes.
Since April 2015, the coarse resolution soil moisture (SM) data from NASA Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) mission have been steadily produced with the expected performance. However, these coarse resolution observations could be downscaled to fine resolution. In this study, the researchers selected nine potential candidate downscaling schemes for developing an optimal downscaling strategy.
They found that the accuracy of the original coarse spatial resolution SMAP SM product can be significantly improved by 8% by the downscaled 1 km SM. This presents a clear advantage over the SMAP/Sentinel SM data product; and it also provides better data availability for users. This study suggests that a near real-time 1 km SMAP SM data product could be routinely generated at the centre for Satellite Applications and Research of NOAA NESDIS.
In addition to his work at ESSIC, Yin is responsible for product development and analysis at NOAA/NESIS/STAR. His research interests include data assimilation, drought monitoring, microwave satellite soil moisture retrievals and land surface model.
To access the paper, click here: “Near‐real‐time one‐kilometre Soil Moisture Active Passive soil moisture data product”.
