CYGNSS: Soil Moisture Estimates for Subtropical Regions

Subtropical regions are covered by this dataset, which provides volumetric water content estimates for the top 5 cm of soil. It is derived from CYGNSS satellite observations calibrated with SMAP data, offering up to four measurements per day at a 6-hour resolution. The data is stored in daily netCDF-4 files from March 2017 onward.

Use Cases

• Monitoring daily soil moisture trends using the SM_daily average variable.
• Analyzing sub-daily soil moisture variability with the SM_subdaily variable.
• Calibrating or validating land surface and hydrological models.
• Studying the relationship between satellite reflectivity (CYGNSS) and soil moisture (SMAP).

Strengths

• Provides a continuous time series from March 2017 to present.
• Offers high temporal resolution with up to four soil moisture estimates per day.
• Data is calibrated against the established SMAP satellite soil moisture product.
• Available on multiple authoritative platforms (Data.gov, NASA Earthdata), indicating reliability.

Limitations

• Spatial coverage is limited to most subtropical regions, not global.
• Column names and precise dataset size (rows, file size) are not provided in the metadata.
• The license is listed as 'other-license-specified' without explicit details.

Provenance

Source

CYGNSS investigators at the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR) and the University of Colorado at Boulder (CU).

Collection Method

Derived from version 2.1 of the CYGNSS L1 SDR, with a soil moisture algorithm calibrated using collocated SMAP retrievals.

Time Range

March 2017 to present

Freshness

2026-04-09 21:23:24.553760

Geography

Most subtropical regions