NASA NRL Coriolis Project: Global Surface Soil Moisture from 2003 to 2012

WindSat/Coriolis surface soil moisture data derived from polarimetric microwave radiometer observations using the Land Parameter Retrieval Model (LPRM). The dataset provides daily, gridded Level 3 products at a 25 km resolution, covering a nine-year period from February 2003 to July 2012. Input brightness temperature data originates from the WindSat instrument on the Naval Research Laboratory's Coriolis satellite, processed and archived by NASA's GES DISC.

Use Cases

• Modeling global hydrological cycles based on surface soil moisture retrievals.
• Analyzing vegetation water content dynamics for agricultural monitoring.
• Studying diurnal land surface temperature variations using separate daytime and nighttime data files.
• Validating other satellite-derived soil moisture products using the LPRM's multi-frequency retrieval method.

Strengths

• Covers a significant nine-year time range from February 2003 to July 2012.
• Provides separate daytime and nighttime data files, enabling diurnal cycle analysis.
• Uses the Land Parameter Retrieval Model, which is applicable to any microwave frequency for broader data exploitation.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Last update date is unknown; freshness unverified.
• Row count and dataset size are unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.

Provenance

Source

NASA Goddard Earth Sciences Data and Information Services Center (GES DISC), from WindSat brightness temperatures on the Naval Research Laboratory's Coriolis satellite.

Collection Method

Derived using the Land Parameter Retrieval Model (LPRM) applied to polarimetric microwave radiometer data.

Time Range

February 2003 to July 2012

Freshness

Data collection ended in July 2012; the dataset is historical.

Geography

Global land surface coverage