Hourly Modeled Root Zone Soil Moisture Across North America

Fall 2012 through Fall 2015 data provides hourly, gridded estimates of volumetric root zone soil moisture at nine AirMOSS sites across North America. This Level 4 product was generated by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration using the Penn State Integrated Hydrologic Model to create temporally continuous, multi-layer soil moisture from intermittent AirMOSS retrievals. The dataset supports applications requiring continuous soil moisture estimates, such as calculating net ecosystem exchange.

Use Cases

• Calculating net ecosystem exchange (NEE) using continuous hourly soil moisture estimates.
• Validating satellite or other remote sensing soil moisture retrievals with modeled, high-resolution (100m) data.
• Analyzing temporal soil moisture dynamics in the root zone across different North American biomes.
• Integrating modeled multi-layer soil moisture into land surface or hydrological models for improved simulation.

Strengths

• Provides temporally continuous, hourly estimates where source retrievals were intermittent, spanning approximately three years from Fall 2012 to Fall 2015.
• Offers high spatial resolution of approximately 100 meters (3-arcseconds) across nine specific North American sites.
• Data is derived from a recognized hydrologic model (Penn State Integrated Hydrologic Model) integrating Level 2/3 retrievals and ancillary information.
• Presence on multiple authoritative platforms (Data.gov and NASA Earthdata) signals its importance and reliability for the research community.

Limitations

• Specific column names, row counts, and dataset size are not provided by any source, limiting detailed technical assessment.
• There is a conflict in the 'last updated' metadata: Data.gov lists 2026-03 -13, while NASA Earthdata lists 2015-09-28, creating uncertainty about recent maintenance.
• Geographic coverage is limited to nine specific AirMOSS sites rather than a continuous continental coverage.

Provenance

Source

National Aeronautics and Space Administration

Collection Method

Integration of AirMOSS Level 2/3 retrievals and ancillary data into the Penn State Integrated Hydrologic Model (PIHM).

Time Range

Fall 2012 through Fall 2015

Freshness

2026-03-13 18:52:28.855098

Geography

Nine AirMOSS sites across North America