SMEX03 Airborne Microwave Radiometer Data for Soil Moisture

SMEX03 Aircraft Polarimetric Scanning Radiometer (PSR) Data provides airborne microwave brightness temperature measurements from C-band and X-band frequencies. The dataset was developed by NOAA's Environmental Technology Laboratory for the 2003 Soil Moisture Experiment in Alabama. It is available in formats including BIN, ISO, and HTML.

Use Cases

• Calibrating and validating satellite-based soil moisture algorithms using airborne C-band and X-band brightness temperatures.
• Analyzing the relationship between land surface conditions (e.g., vegetation, soil wetness) and microwave emission signatures.
• Studying polarimetric properties of natural targets for improving passive microwave remote sensing models.

Strengths

• Data originates from a NOAA-developed airborne instrument designed for precise microwave imaging.
• Provides dual-frequency (C-band and X-band) brightness temperature data for enhanced surface characterization.
• Dataset is hosted on multiple authoritative platforms (NASA Earthdata and Data.gov), indicating established curation.

Limitations

• Critical metadata is missing: no column names, row counts, or file sizes are provided by any source.
• Sources conflict on the last updated date, listing both 2003-07-17 and 2026-03 12.
• The specific license is unclear, only noted as 'other-license-specified' or 'None'.

Provenance

Source

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Environmental Technology Laboratory.

Collection Method

Collected by the Polarimetric Scanning Radiometer (PSR), an airborne microwave imaging radiometer.

Time Range

2003

Freshness

2026-03-12 22:25:39.479712

Geography

Alabama, United States.