SMOS level3 and 4: new products for new science
Résumé
The SMOS mission was launched in November 2009 and allows for measuring of the surface soil moisture and vegetation optical depth over continental land areas, covering the entire globe every 3 days. The ESA’s DPGS (European Space Agency’s Data Processing Ground Segment) has been delivering the so called Level 2 products, consisting in ½ orbits data. The CNES (Centre National d’Etudes Spatiales) has developed the CATDS (Centre Aval de Traitement des Données SMOS) ground segment that now provides spatial and temporal synthesis products (referred to as Level 3 products) of soil moisture, vegetation optical depth, ocean salinity and brightness temperature, which now cover the whole SMOS operation period, from January 2010 onwards. After developing the level 3 products over land and oceans, a wealth of new science applications started to appear and are being put into the level 4 scheme after validation. These products are currently in their validation stage, with some being more mature than others. Some products are currently being implemented. These encompass root zone soil moisture and drought indices over land, dis-aggregated (i.e., high resolution) soil moisture fields in local areas, and hurricane monitoring over the oceans. A near real time soil moisture product for Numerical Weather Prediction) (NWP) and risk assessment is also being tested. Other products are currently being studied or finalized such as flood monitoring and risk assessment over land, rain fall estimates over specific areas (land and in some specific cases ocean), hydrology in organic rich soils, freeze-thaw cycle in boreal areas, and vegetation water content/monitoring. During the presentation, we will give an overview of the different products and an assessment of their maturity and validation together with their scientific relevance.