Newsletter | February 2016
New extended version of ESA CCI SM released
We are pleased to announce the publication of ESA CCI SM v02.2 that
extends the soil moisture data record until December of 2014 and now
covers a period of 36 years. The new release also has some new features
including improved soil moisture dynamics, a better spatial coverage,
and an improved inter-calibration between the different satellites.
ESA CCI SM is based on a series of active and passive
microwave satellite sensors. It provides daily surface
soil moisture with a spatial resolution of 0.25 degrees.
Three products are provided: a merged passive only, a
merged active only and a combined active+passive soil
moisture product.
The new ESA CCI SM v02.2 has a significantly improved
spatial and temporal coverage with respect to earlier
versions, in particular for the period 2002-2006.
Previous product versions had a limited data coverage
during this period due to the failure of the ERS AMI
sensor. The data gaps resulting from this failure have
been largely filled with observations from AMSR-E.
This makes the product more consistent for time series
analysis. Besides the data coverage, v02.2 features
a significantly improved intercalibration between the
AMSR-E, WindSat, and AMSR2 radiometers, which
results in improved consistency, particularly after 2011.
About ESA CCI SM v02.2
Key improvements
Soil moisture science
Recent publications
Download ESA CCI SM 02.2 here: http://www.esasoilmoisture-cci.org/dataregistration
Please participate in our user survey, as we are
continously improving the soil moisture product:
https://geo.tuwien.ac.at/limesurvey/index.
php/141266/lang-en
The integration of SMOS within CCI Soil Moisture
Significant progress has been
made on the integration of SMOS
within the CCI climate data record.
ESA recently supported an
additional study to facilitate the
seamless integration of SMOS
data.
Different scenarios have been
applied and show promising
results. In the next product
version SMOS will become part of
the CCI soil moisture data record.
Figure 1: Global mean soil
moisture derived with the Land
Parameter Retrievals Model
(LPRM) from SMOS soil
moisture retrievals​.
Overview of key improvements in the ESA CCI SM v02.2
◊ Dataset extends to the end of December
2014
◊ Improved calibration and resolution of
ASCAT input product
◊ Improved bias correction for Windsat
and AMSR-2 input products
◊ Improved soil moisture dynamics
◊ New data attributes
◊ Data gaps due to ERS failure filled with
AMSR-E for the period 2002-2006
Figure 2: Impact of filling gaps occurring due to ERS-failure using AMSR-E data for v02.2. On the top the impact on the temporal coverage is presented, on
the bottom the impact of gap filling on soil moisture anomalies. As an example we show August 2003, when a very strong heat-wave stroke Western Europe.
Soil Moisture Science
Adding value to soil moisture information for climate studies
As part of ESA CCI soil moisture activities,
the International Space Science Institute
(ISSI) funded the International Team
„Adding value to soil moisture information
for climate studies“, led by William Lahoz
(NILU). One of the goals of the team was to
strengthen links between the ESA CCI Soil
Moisture community, other land surface ESA
CCIs, and the carbon cycle community. The
International Team had its second and last
meeting in November 2015.
During this meeting, the team discussed
a number of key features that need to be
considered for the ESA CCI soil moisture
product. These features included the
representation of soil moisture in volumetric
units and anomalies, the ability and need to
provide solely satellite based soil moisture
products and the development of an
additional root-zone soil moisture product.
The development of a root-zone product
typically requires a model in combination
with data assimilation.
The outcome from this meeting will be two
scientific papers. The first paper concerns
a discussion of validation methods of
soil moisture datasets. The second paper
concerns sensitivity studies of the impact of
ancillary data on soil moisture. Furthermore,
cross CCI activities were initiated between
the land cover and soil moisture teams and
the added value of soil moisture in flood
forecasting was investigated.
Overall, the team had a fruitful meeting,
with many discussions on the ESA CCI soil
moisture work, and the ways to increase
collaboration between the various actors
in the land component of the Earth system.
This confirmed the value of International
Teams from ISSI.
ESA Living Planet 2015 fellowship for Matthias Forkel and Wouter Dorigo: “Soil moisture
controls on fire emissions”
ESA has awarded a Living Planet Postdoc
fellowship 2015 to Matthias Forkel. The
study called “CCI data for assessing SOil
moisture controls on FIre Emissions
(CCI4SOFIE)” was submitted by Wouter
Dorigo (TU Wien; ESA CCI soil moisture),
Matthias Forkel (MPI Biogeochemistry),
Guido van der Werf (VU Amsterdam; ESA
CCI Fire), and Richard de Jeu (Transmissivity;
ESA CCI soil moisture) and will assess
the role of soil moisture in controlling fire
ignition, spread, and emissions into the
atmosphere (e.g. CO2, NOx). The study will
greatly exploit the synergy between ESA
CCI soil moisture and other ESA datasets,
e.g., CCI fire, CCI land cover, CCI greenhouse
gases, CCI aerosols, and GlobEmissions with
the final goal to improve the fire emission
model “SPITFIRE”. Matthias Forkel will
start his fellowship at TU Wien in February
2016, while closely cooperating with the
VU University Amsterdam, the Postdam
Institute of Climate Impact Research, and
Transmissivity.
The CCI team contributed to the BAMS ‘State of the Climate’ report 2014
“Soil moisture matters” - this was also
underlined by NOAA who selected our
contribution to the BAMS State-of-theClimate report (https://www2.ametsoc.
org/ams/index.cfm/publications/bulletinof-the-american-meteorological-societybams/state-of-the-climate/) as one of
their climate highlights (https://www.
climate.gov/news-features/understandingclimate/2014-state-climate-soil-moisture).
While slightly wetter than 2013, the global
soil moisture conditions in 2014 were nearnormal, but with large regional differences
[Figure 3]. The near-average global soil
moisture conditions observed in 2014 were
largely related to the El Niño-Southern
Oscillation (ENSO), which was in a largely
ENSO neutral/marginal El Niño phase.
On a global-average scale, El Niño tends to yield
drier-than-normal soil conditions, which was
observed during the 1997–98 El Niño, while
La Niña tends toward wetter-than normal,
particularly in the Southern Hemisphere.
Reference: W. A. Dorigo, C. Reimer, D.
Chung,R. M. Parinussa, T. Melzer, W. Wagner,
R. A.M. de Jeu, and R. Kidd, 2015: Soil
Moisture [in “State of the Climate in 2014”].
Bull. Amer. Meteor. Soc., 96 (7), S28–29.
Figure 3: Soil moisture across the globe in 2014 compared to the average from 1991 - 2012. Map adapted from Plate 2.1f in State of the Climate in 2014.
Recent publications
Several publications recently appeared that either make an important contribution to the generation of the CCI soil moisture product,
or make use of it:
Gruber, A., Su, C.-H., Zwieback, S., Crow,
W., Dorigo, W., Wagner, W. (2015). Recent
advances in (soil moisture) triple collocation
analysis, International Journal of Applied
Earth Observation and Geoinformation.
Volume 45, Part B, March 2016, p. 200-211,
ISSN 0303-2434.
Gruber, A., Crow, W., Dorigo, W., Wagner,
W. (2015). The potential of 2D Kalman
filtering for soil moisture data assimilation,
Remote Sensing of Environment, Volume
171, 15 December 2015, p. 137-148, ISSN
0034-4257.
Van der Schalie, R., Kerr, Y.H., Wigneron,
J.P., Rodríguez-Fernández, N.J., Al-Yaari,
A., de Jeu, R.A.M. (2015). Global SMOS
Soil Moisture Retrievals from The Land
Parameter Retrieval Model, International
Journal of Applied Earth Observation and
Geoinformation, Volume 45, Part B, March
2016, p. 125-134, ISSN 0303-2434.
Nicolai-Shaw, N., Hirschi, M., Mittelbach,
H. and Seneviratne, S. I. (2015). Spatial
representativeness of soil moisture using
in-situ, remote sensing and land-reanalysis
data, J. Geophys. Res. Atmos., 120.
Das, S., & Maity, R. (2015). Potential of
Probabilistic Hydrometeorological Approach
for Precipitation-Based Soil Moisture
Estimation. J. Hydrol. Eng., 20(4), 04014056.
De Nijs AHA, RM Parinussa, RAM de Jeu, J
Schellekens & TRH Holmes (2015).
A Methodology to Determine Radio
Frequency Interference in AMSR2
Observations Geoscience and Remote
Sensing, IEEE Transactions, vol.53, no.9, p.
5148-5159.
Dorigo, W.A., Gruber, A., De Jeu, R.A.M.,
Wagner, W., Stacke, T., Loew, A., Albergel,
C., Brocca, L., Chung, D., Parinussa, R.M.,
Kidd, R. (2015). Evaluation of the ESA
CCI soil moisture product using groundbased observations. Remote Sensing of
Environment, Volume 162, 1, p. 380–395.
Griesfeller, A., W.A. Lahoz, R.A.M. de Jeu,
W. Dorigo, L.E. Haugen, T.M. Svendby, and
W. Wagner (2015). Evaluation of satellite
soil moisture products over Norway using
ground-based observations. Int. J. Appl.
Earth Obs. & Geoinfo. (JAG), Volume 45,
Part B, March 2016, p. 155-164, ISSN
0303-2434.
Lai, X., Wen, J., Cen, S., Huang, X., Tian,
H. & Shi, X. (2016). Spatial and Temporal
Soil Moisture Variations over China from
Simulations and Observations. Advances
in Meteorology. Volume 2016, Article ID
4587687
McNally, A., Husak, G.J., Brown, M., Carroll,
M., Funk, C., Yatheendradas, S., Arsenault,
K., Peters-Lidard, C., & Verdin, J.P. (2015).
Calculating Crop Water Requirement
Satisfaction in the West Africa Sahel with
Remotely Sensed Soil Moisture. Journal of
Hydrometeorology, 16, p. 295-305.
Parinussa RM, TRH Holmes, N Wanders,
W Dorigo & RAM de Jeu (2015). A
Preliminary study towards consistent soil
moisture records from AMSR2, Journal of
Hydrometeorology. Volume 16, Issue 2, p.
932–947.
Spennemann, P.C., Rivera, J.A., Celeste
Saulo, A., & Penalba, O.C. (2015). A
comparison of GLDAS soil moisture
anomalies against standardized
precipitation index and multisatellite
estimations over South America. Journal of
Hydrometeorology, 16, p. 158-171.
Van der Schalie, RM Parinussa, LJ Renzullo,
AIJM van Dijk, CH Su & RAM de Jeu (2015).
SMOS Soil Moisture Retrievals from the
Land Parameter Retrieval Model over
the Murrumbidgee Catchment, southeast
Australia, Remote Sensing of Environment.
Volume 163, 15 June 2015, p. 70–79.
Yuan, X., Ma, Z., Pan, M., & Shi, C. (2015).
Microwave remote sensing of short-term
droughts during crop growing seasons.
Geophysical Research Letter, Volume 42,
Issue 11, p. 4394–4401.
Zeng, J., Li, Z., Chen, Q., Bi, H., Qui, J. &
Zou, P. (2015). Evaluation of remotely
sensed and reanalysis soil moisture
products over the Tibetan Plateau using
in-situ observations. Remote Sensing of
Environment, Volume 163, 15, p. 91-110,
ISSN 0034-4257.
JAG publishes “Special Issue on Satellite Soil Moisture - Part 1”
The International Journal of Applied Earth
Observation and Geoinformations published
the first part of a special issue on “the
advances in the validation and application
of remotely sensed soil moisture”, edited by
the two CCI science team members, Richard
de Jeu and Wouter Dorigo.
The aim of this Special Issue is to give a
comprehensive state-of-the-art on the
potential and limitations of various new
satellite products, in particular with respect
to the various application fields.
The Special Issue consists of two parts:
• Part 1 (now published) focuses primarily
on single sensor soil moisture retrievals
and validation and is available online at:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/
journal/03032434/45/part/PB
• Part 2 (expected by mid 2016) will mainly
focus on long-term soil moisture records
from multi-sensor observations (e.g. soil
moisture records from the ESA Soil Moisture
Climate Change Initiative) and satellite soil
moisture applications.
www.esa-soilmoisture-cci.org
This Special Issue is linked to the “Satellite
soil moisture validation and application
workshop 2014” which was held in July
2014 in Amsterdam, the Netherlands,
but also contains contributions from nonworkshop participants. Both the workshop
and the Special Issue were supported by the
CCI Soil Moisture project.
Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Wagner, [email protected] and Dr. Wouter Dorigo, [email protected]
Project management: Dr. Eva Haas [email protected]; Richard Kidd: [email protected]