The ESA CoSMOS Study for the Validation of the SMOS Soil Moisture L2 Prototype
Kauzar Saleh, Yann Kerr, Gilles Boulet, Maria Jose Escorihuela, Phillipe Maisongrande, Phillipe Richaume, Patricia de Rosnay, Jean-Pierre Wigneron, A Cano, E Lopez-Baeza, Jennifer Grant, Niels Skou, Rocco Panciera, Jeffrey Walker, Michael Berger and Steven Delwart
Power Point Presentation
The ESA CoSMOS study is dedicated to perform the first validation of the SMOS Soil Moisture Level 2 processor using real data. The validation relies on the large CoSMOS/NAFE data set acquired in the Goulburn River Catchment (Southeast Australia) in 2005. The CoSMOS/ NAFE campaign involved two L-band radiometers, EMIRAD and PLMR, onboard two aircrafts, and provided L-band data for six weeks. Extensive ground support was available from the NAFE-05 campaign.
This communication presents progress on the studies defined for the validation of the SMOS Soil Moisture L2 algorithm. These include testing the ‘default’ L2 algorithm over homogenous an heterogeneous surfaces, fine-tuning of the microwave model used by the prototype (soil model, vegetation model, litter model), and experiments on the retrievals of the surface soil moisture from high resolution to the scale of a SMOS pixel. The CoSMOS study also addresses ‘Opportunity studies’ to gain further understanding of issues such as the magnitude of sun-glint over land, or the use of fully polarimetric L- band data to assist in the retrieval of surface parameters.