Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS) is the second Earth Explorer Opportunity mission developed as part of the European Space Agency (ESA) Living Planet programme. SMOS ws launched on 02 November 2009. The SMOS mission provides two-dimensional interferometric radiometer measurements of L-band (1.4 GHz) brightness temperature from a satellite in polar orbit. At this frequency the atmosphere is almost transparent and surface emission is strongly related to soil moisture over continental surfaces and salinity over oceans (www.esa.int/esaLP/LPsmos.html).
The key objectives of the SMOS mission are to:
- Improve our understanding of the global water cycle.
- Contribute to the improvement in weather and seasonal-climate forecasting.
ECMWF plays a major role in developing and implementing the use of SMOS brightness temperature data in NWP models. ECMWF’s contribution to the SMOS mission is two-fold:
- Development of a data monitoring system for the SMOS near real time product to provide a timely quality check for ESA and the SMOS calibration and validation teams.
- Assimilation of SMOS brightness temperature data in ECMWF's global NWP system through the Surface Data Assimilation System (SDAS) based on the Extended Kalman Filter. This system is currently being tested with the active microwave METOP/ASCAT surface soil moisture data
One main component of the monitoring is the observation operator that transforms model fields (soil moisture and ocean salinity) into observation equivalent (brightness temperatures).
To this end the CMEM (Community Microwave Emission Modelling Platform) has been developed at ECMWF.
ECMWF ESA Reports on SMOS:
- Muñoz Sabater J. and P. de Rosnay"SMOS report on noise filtering", Technical Note - Phase-II - WP1300 ESA/ESRIN Contract, 2011, (pdf)
- Muñoz Sabater J., P.de Rosnay, M. Dahoui: SMOS continuous monitoring report - Part 1; February 2011 (pdf)
- Muñoz Sabater J., M. Dahoui, P. de Rosnay, L. Isaksen: Technical Note, Phase II, WP1100: SMOS Monitoring Report; December 2011 (pdf)
- Muñoz Sabater J., T. Wilhelmsson, P. de Rosnay and L. Isaksen SMOS Report on data thinning - Technical Note - Phase II - WP1200; September 2011 (pdf)
- Muñoz Sabater J., P.de Rosnay, A.Fouilloux: Milestone 2 Tech Note - Parts 1/2/3: Operational Pre-processing chain, Collocation software development and Offline monitoring suite; December 2010 (pdf)
- de Rosnay, P., M. Drusch and J. Muñoz Sabater: Milestone 1 Tech Note - Part 1: SMOS Global Surface Emission Model November 2009 (pdf)
- Muñoz Sabater J., P.de Rosnay, A.Fouilloux, M. Dragosavac and A.Hofstadler: Milestone 1 Tech Note - Part 2: IFS Interface November 2009 (pdf)