LPRM_TMI_NT_SOILM3: Nighttime Soil Moisture from TRMM Satellite

LPRM_TMI_NT_SOILM3 is a Level 3 gridded dataset from NASA's GES DISC providing nighttime land surface parameters derived from the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) Microwave Imager. It contains daily estimates of surface soil moisture, land surface skin temperature, and vegetation water content at a 25 km x 25 km resolution, processed using the Land Parameter Retrieval Model (LPRM). The data covers a historical period from December 1997 to April 2015, when the TRMM satellite instruments were decommissioned.

Use Cases

• Monitoring drought conditions based on daily surface soil moisture estimates.
• Analyzing land surface energy fluxes using derived skin temperature from the Ka-band (37 GHz).
• Studying vegetation health and water stress through retrieved vegetation water content.
• Calibrating or validating other soil moisture models using the LPRM forward radiative transfer method.
• Investigating historical land surface changes in the tropics from 1997 to 2015.

Strengths

• Provides a consistent 17+ year time series (Dec 1997 - Apr 2015) for long-term climate studies.
• Derives three key land parameters (soil moisture, temperature, vegetation water) from a unified retrieval model (LPRM).
• Method is applicable to any microwave frequency, making it suitable for cross-sensor comparison.

Limitations

• Specific column names and data structure are not provided in the metadata.
• Dataset is historical and static, with no new data after April 2015.
• Platform metadata conflicts on last update date (2015 vs 2026), suggesting potential metadata inconsistency.

Provenance

Source

GES_DISC

Collection Method

Passive microwave remote sensing data from TRMM Microwave Imager (TMI), processed using the Land Parameter Retrieval Model (LPRM).

Time Range

December 1997 to April 2015

Freshness

2026-04-09 21:32:18.331164

Geography

Global, likely focused on tropical regions covered by TRMM.