AirMOSS Hourly Precipitation Data for Soil Moisture Calibration

Seven North American sites recorded calibrated hourly precipitation from September 2011 to December 2015. NASA's AirMOSS project collected this data using three rain gauges per site to calibrate and validate airborne radar estimates of root-zone soil moisture. The dataset represents a multi-year, multi-site observational campaign supporting subsurface hydrological research.

Use Cases

• Calibrating airborne radar (AirMOSS) soil moisture estimates using in-situ precipitation measurements.
• Analyzing hourly precipitation patterns across seven distinct North American ecosystems.
• Validating hydrological models that require concurrent precipitation and soil moisture data.
• Studying the relationship between surface precipitation and root-zone soil moisture dynamics.

Strengths

• Data is calibrated (Level 2) and collected from three gauges per site for reliability.
• Provides a continuous 4+ year time series from September 2011 to December 2015.
• Spatially coordinated with in-ground soil moisture measurements at seven specific study sites.

Limitations

• Exact row count, column names, and file size are unknown from all sources.
• Sources conflict on the last updated date: Data.gov lists 2026-03-13, while NASA Earthdata lists 2015-12 31.
• The specific license is listed only as 'other-license-specified' without detailed terms.

Provenance

Source

National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)

Collection Method

Collected from three installed rain gauges at each of seven sites as part of the Airborne Microwave Observatory of Subcanopy and Subsurface (AirMOSS) project.

Time Range

2011-09 to 2015-12

Freshness

2026-03-13 19:15:36.217133

Geography

Seven study sites across North America