NASA Aquarius Project: Global Soil Moisture and Glacier Data

NASA Aquarius Project data includes global soil moisture estimates derived from the Aquarius passive microwave radiometer on the SAC-D satellite. The collection also contains debris thickness and melt factors for glaciers in High Mountain Asia, plus daily freeze/thaw/melt status and extreme precipitation indices for the region. The dataset is hosted on AWS Open Data and is licensed under CC-BY-4.0.

Use Cases

• Modeling global soil moisture trends based on Level-2 and Level-3 gridded satellite estimates.
• Analyzing debris-covered glacier melt dynamics based on distributed thickness and melt enhancement factors.
• Monitoring daily landscape freeze/thaw cycles and snowmelt status in High Mountain Asia using C-band backscatter data.
• Studying extreme precipitation patterns in High Mountain Asia using annual mean indices like Rx1day and R95pTOT.

Strengths

• Provides multiple data products including Level-2 and Level-3 gridded soil moisture at daily, weekly, monthly, seasonal, and annual scales.
• Includes specialized datasets for High Mountain Asia covering glacier debris, freeze/thaw status, and precipitation extremes.

Limitations

• Row count, file size, and last update date are unknown, limiting suitability assessment.
• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.

Provenance

Source

NASA Aquarius radiometer on the SAC-D satellite and EUMETSAT Metop satellites.

Collection Method

Soil moisture derived from passive microwave radiometry; glacier data derived from melt and temperature inversion methods; freeze/thaw from C-band backscatter.

Time Range

null

Freshness

Last updated date is unknown; freshness unverified.

Geography

Global for soil moisture; High Mountain Asia region for glacier and freeze/thaw data.