AMSR2/GCOM-W1 LPRM: Soil Moisture and Land Temperature Swaths

AMSR2/GCOM-W1 surface soil moisture (LPRM) L2B V001 is a Level 2 swath dataset from NASA. It provides land surface parameters derived from passive microwave data from the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer 2 (AMSR2) instrument aboard the JAXA GCOM-W1 satellite, using the Land Parameter Retrieval Model (LPRM). The dataset includes surface soil moisture, land surface (skin) temperature, and vegetation water content, covering the period from the satellite's launch in May 2012 to the present.

Use Cases

• Monitoring drought conditions based on surface soil moisture retrievals.
• Modeling land-atmosphere interactions using concurrent soil moisture and land surface temperature data.
• Assessing vegetation health and water stress via the vegetation water content variable.
• Validating hydrological and climate models with global, satellite-derived land parameter time series.

Strengths

• Provides a continuous, long-term record from May 2012 to present, supporting climate trend analysis.
• Derives multiple co-located land parameters (soil moisture, temperature, vegetation water content) from a single sensor using a physically-based retrieval model.
• Has a cross-platform presence on NASA Earthdata and Data.gov, indicating established use and validation.

Limitations

• Spatial resolution is coarse, nominally 46 km and 31 km for the C and X bands, limiting analysis to regional or global scales.
• Column names and specific data structure are not provided in the available metadata, complicating initial use.
• License information is inconsistently reported ('other-license-specified' vs. 'None'), requiring user verification.

Provenance

Source

National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), using input data from the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) AMSR2 instrument.

Collection Method

Parameters are derived from passive microwave remote sensing data using the Land Parameter Retrieval Model (LPRM), a forward radiative transfer model.

Time Range

May 2012 to present.

Freshness

Last updated March 13, 2026, according to Data.gov.

Geography

Global coverage from the GCOM-W1 satellite swaths.