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Description

This data set contains gridded estimates of soil moisture in the top 1 cm of soil, averaged over the AMSR-E retrieval footprint. Soil moisture is estimated from AMSR-E/Aqua L2A brightness temperature (Tb) measurements using two different approaches: the Normalized Polarization Difference algorithm (NPD) and the Single Channel Algorithm (SCA).

Ancillary data are also provided to help interpret the soil moisture observations, including vegetation roughness, observation counts for various surface conditions, and QA flags.

Version Description

  • Soil moisture is now estimated using two different approaches - the Normalized Polarization Difference algorithm (NPD) and the Single Channel Algorithm (SCA) - to be consistent with the AU_Land soil moisture product. As a result, output parameters are now the same as AU_Land.

  • File format changed to HDF-EOS5.

See <a href="https://nsidc.org/data/amsre/version-history">https://nsidc.org/data/amsre/version-history</a>

Product Summary

Platforms
Aqua
Instruments
AMSR-E
Spatial Extent

N: 89.24 S: -89.24 E: 180 W: -180

Spatial Resolution
25 Kilometers x 25 Kilometers
Geographic Region
GLOBAL
Coordinate System
CARTESIAN
Granule Spatial Representation
ORBIT
Temporal Extent
2002-06-01 to 2011-10-04
Concept ID
C3363039551-NSIDC_CPRD
Data State
COMPLETE
Number of Files/Granules
98162
Processing Level
2B
Published
Science Keywords
Soil Moisture/Water Content ,
Vegetation Water Content

Citation

Citation is critically important for dataset documentation and discovery. This dataset is openly shared, without restriction, in accordance with the EOSDIS Data Use and Citation Guidance.

Copy Citation

Chan, S., Bindlish, R., & Jackson, T. (2021). AMSR-E/Aqua L2B Surface Soil Moisture, Ancillary Parms, & QC EASE-Grids, Version 3 [Data set]. NASA National Snow and Ice Data Center Distributed Active Archive Center. https://doi.org/10.5067/3JUPY6PAHHCP Date Accessed: 2026-01-08

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