Aqua/AMSR-E L2 Soil Moisture Content

Product Summary

Aqua/AMSR-E L2 Soil Moisture dataset is obtained from the AMSR-E sensor onboard Aqua and produced by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA).
Aqua of NASA was launched on May 4th, 2002 in Sun-synchronous sub-recurrent Orbit. Aqua observes various kinds of physical phenomena related to water and energy circulation from space. Aqua data promoted the research activities for interactions between the atmosphere, oceans and lands, and their effects on climate changes.
AMSR-E scans the Earth's surface by mechanically rotating the antenna and acquires radiance data of the Earth's surface. Each frequency band is monitored by vertical and horizontal polarized wave. It conically scans and keeps an angle of incidence on the earth surface (a nominal of 55 degrees) and accomplishes a swath width of about 1450 km. The AMSR-E reached its limit to maintain the antenna rotation speed necessary for regular observations, and the AMSR-E restarted its observation in slow rotation mode (2 rotations per minute) on December 4, 2012. However, the AMSR-E reached its limit to maintain the antenna rotation speed necessary for slow rotation mode and it automatically halted its observation and rotation on December 4, 2015.
Level 2 product stores the Geophysical quantity from the brightness temperature of level 1 product.
This product includes Soil Moisture (MC). In general, at a smooth interface between two semi-infinite media, the emissivity is equal to one minus the Fresnel power reflectivity, which is calculated by using dielectric constant of the media and incident angle. Among the water surface emissivity at AMSR observing frequencies, 6.9; l0.6, 18.7, 36.5 and 89 GHz, the emissivity is larger at the higher frequency than at the lower one for both polarizations. The index, the discrepancy between the brightness temperatures at two frequencies divided by one at lower frequency, can be used as an index for surface wetness. The physical quantity unit is %.
Also, the quality flag for each observation point (Pixel Data Quality) is stored.
The provided format is HDF4. Spatial resolution is 10 km. The current version of the product is "Version 7". The generation unit is scene (defined as a half orbit).

Platform

Aqua

Sensor

AMSR-E

Coverage

Temporal Coverage

2002-06-01 to 2011-10-05

Spatial Coverage

Bounding Rectangle
(90.0°, -180.0°, -90.0°, 180.0°)

Resolution

10 km

Location

• GLOBAL > GLOBAL LAND