Publication Details |
| Category | Text Publication |
| Reference Category | Journals |
| DOI | 10.5194/essd-18-4047-2026 |
Licence  |
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| Title (Primary) | An operational global L-band soil moisture and vegetation optical depth dataset from optimized 40° SMOS brightness temperatures for 2010–2024 |
| Author | Xing, Z.; Li, X.; Frappart, F.; De Lannoy, G.; Jagdhuber, T.; Peng, J.
; Fan, L.; Ma, H.; Karthikeyan, L.; Liu, X.; Wang, M.; Zhao, L.; Liu, Y.; Wigneron, J.-P. |
| Source Titel | Earth System Science Data |
| Year | 2026 |
| Department | RS |
| Volume | 18 |
| Issue | 6 |
| Page From | 4047 |
| Page To | 4073 |
| Language | englisch |
| Topic | T5 Future Landscapes |
| Data and Software links | https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17647385 |
| Abstract |
The Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS)
mission delivers the first multi-angular L-band observations for retrieving
global soil moisture (SM) and vegetation optical depth (VOD), two critical
variables for understanding terrestrial water and carbon cycles. However, the
combined effects of non-identical fields of view and aliasing in multi-angular
SMOS brightness temperature (TB) observations can introduce noise and biases
when the TBs are averaged to a nominal incidence angle, as done in the SMOS L3
dataset, thereby degrading land parameter retrievals. To address this issue, an
optimized SMOS TB dataset was initially produced at a fixed 40° incidence
angle, consistent with the Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) mission. We then
developed the first SMOS mono-angular SM and VOD products designed to achieve
performance comparable to SMAP and improved relative to conventional
multi-angle SMOS retrievals. The 40° TB optimization was performed using the
L-band Microwave Emission of the Biosphere (L-MEB) model, and the inversion
relied on the SMAP-INRAE-BORDEAUX (SMAP-IB) algorithm, yielding a global 40°
SMOS TB record and associated SM and VOD products for 2010–2024 at 25 km
spatial resolution, collectively referred to as SMOS-IB. Results showed that
the optimized 40° TB reached a performance level comparable to SMAP and
improved relative to SMOS-L3, both in its sensitivity to in-situ SM from the
International Soil Moisture Network (ISMN) and in the reduction of global
pixel-scale noise. When multiple evaluation metrics are considered, the SMOS-IB
SM and VOD data, benefiting from the use of the optimized TB as input and a
newly optimized soil roughness (Hr) parameterization, showed improved
performance compared with those derived from SMOS L3 40° TB or from the
multi-angular SMOS products. The SMOS-IB TB, SM and VOD products can be used
for L-band algorithm development and SMAP harmonization, global drought
monitoring, and studies of vegetation water and biomass dynamics. SMOS-IB is
publicly available at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17647385 (Xing et al.,
2025). |
| Xing, Z., Li, X., Frappart, F., De Lannoy, G., Jagdhuber, T., Peng, J., Fan, L., Ma, H., Karthikeyan, L., Liu, X., Wang, M., Zhao, L., Liu, Y., Wigneron, J.-P. (2026): An operational global L-band soil moisture and vegetation optical depth dataset from optimized 40° SMOS brightness temperatures for 2010–2024 Earth Syst. Sci. Data 18 (6), 4047 - 4073 10.5194/essd-18-4047-2026 |
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