Validation of satellite microwave retrieved soil moisture with global ground-based measurements
Résumé
Soil moisture retrieval from microwave remote sensing brightness temperatures is in continuous development. In this study, the most recent and latest microwave remote sensing soil moisture products were evaluated against ground-based measurements. We compared, for the first time, the latest versions of SMOS (L2V650 and SMOS-IC V105), SMAP (L3V4), and CCI (V03.2) soil moisture products with respect to ground-based measurements obtained from ISMN (International Soil Moisture Network). Time series were plotted over some sites and it was found that all these products capture well the temporal dynamics over all the sites used in this study. However, CCI was wetter than the in situ measurements over Niger and both SMOS products (IC and L2) and SMAP were drier than the in situ observations over Biebrza site in Poland.