ESA Climate Change Initiative Soil Moisture CCI

01.12.2011 - 30.11.2014
Assigned research project
The objective of the project is to produce the most complete and most consistent global essential climate variable (ECV) soil moisture data record based on active and passive microwave sensors. The project focuses on C-band scatterometers (ERS-1/2 scatterometer, METOP Advanced Scatterometer) and multi-frequency radiometers (SMMR, SSM/I, TMI, AMSR-E, Windsat), but also considers the Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS) mission, Synthetic Aperture Radars (SARs) and radar altimeters at a later stage. The project will establish an ECV production system for surface soil moisture data, and addresses the five cardinal requirements of ESA’s CCI programme. The CCI Soil Moisture project will also establish links to the Climate Research Community including Group on Earth Observation (GEO), Global Climate Observing System (GCOS) and the World Climate Research Programme (WCRP) The consortium consists of seven organisations from five ESA member states eligible for funding through the Strategic Initiative (StrIn), namely Austria, Switzerland, Ireland, Norway and Finland. Additionally, one university from The Netherlands is included in the consortium because of its crucial expertise in deriving soil moisture from passive instruments.

People

Project leader

Project personnel

Institute

Contract/collaboration

  • ESA-ESRIN

External partner

  • University College Cork
  • Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
  • Norwegian Institute for Air Research (NILU)
  • Angewandte Wissenschaft, Software & Technologie GmbH
  • Finnish Meteorolocial Institute
  • GeoVille Informationssysteme und Datenverarbeitung GmbH
  • ETH Zürich

Publications