Talks and Poster Presentations (with Proceedings-Entry):
W. Wagner, V. Naeimi:
"Initial Validation of ASCAT Soil Moisture Data with In-Situ Measurements";
Poster: EGU 2009,
Vienna;
2009-04-19
- 2009-04-24; in: "Geophysical Research Abstracts",
11
(2009),
Paper ID EGU2009-5399,
1 pages.
English abstract:
The Advanced Scatterometer (ASCAT) is part of the payload of three METOP satellites which constitute the
EUMETSAT Polar System (EPS) - Europe´s first polar orbiting operational meteorological satellite system. It was
designed solely for operational wind monitoring over the oceans, but research with its successor instrument, the
scatterometer on board of ERS-1 and ERS-2, has shown that it can also be used for monitoring soil moisture over
land surfaces. Therefore, in a cooperation between EUMETSAT and the Vienna University of Technology (TU
Wien) a near-real-time (NRT) processing system has been set at EUMETSAT which was declared operational 11
December 2008.
The ASCAT soil moisture product is produced in near real-time by EUMETSAT, using the so-called WARP-NRT
software originally developed by TU Wien and prototyped for EUMETSAT. ASCAT soil moisture is a Level 2
product delivered in orbit geometry at two different grid spacing: 25 km and 12.5 km. The two products are
derived directly and on the same grid as the equivalent ASCAT Level 1b backscatter products, hence the resolution
of the soil moisture values is approximately 50/35 km respectively. The ASCAT Level 2 Soil Moisture product is
disseminated via EUMETCast-Europe, channel "EPS-3" within 2h from sensing in BUFR format.
This poster shows initial validation results of ASCAT soil moisture using in-situ soil moisture observations from
different networks in Europe and North America. The initial results show that ASCAT soil moisture data compare
slightly more favorably to the in-situ measurements as published results with the ERS scatterometer. It is believed
that this is due to some algorithmic improvements, a higher temporal sampling rate and, possibly, the higher
radiometric accuracy of ASCAT.
Electronic version of the publication:
http://publik.tuwien.ac.at/files/PubDat_175589.pdf
Created from the Publication Database of the Vienna University of Technology.