Improvement of the ESA Satellite Soil Moisture Climate Data Records

or any climate change study, the consistency of a long-term data record is key. This corresponds to the goal of the Climate Change Initiative (CCI) of the European Space Agency (ESA), which is to generate consistent, long-term, and global data records for all Essential Climate Variables.

In this context, VanderSat has led the coordination of a peer-reviewed publication on ‘Reconciling Flagging Strategies for Multi-Sensor Satellite Soil Moisture Climate Data Records’. Together with leading research institutes, CESBIO, NASA SMAP and TU Wien, we have worked on understanding the inconsistencies related to differences in data quality filtering methods applied on several Soil Moisture satellite products. The paper of Van der Vliet et al. (2020) also introduces an improved data quality filtering method that is model independent and can be applied on the full historical record (1978 to present) of the multi-sensor ESA CCI Soil Moisture dataset. As the method has shown to give robust results, it is now lined up for implementation in the next version of ESA CCI Soil Moisture (V6, https://www.esa-soilmoisture-cci.org/) and already implemented in the VanderSat datasets. The new method leads to an improved model independency and consistency of these long-term, multi satellite sensor records. Meaning that this increases their usefulness for climate (change) risk analysis and model benchmarking or evaluation.

Did you know that science is the foundation on which the VanderSat operational service is built? Our people share a passion for satellite observation data. And a firm belief that expertise in water and soil moisture is more important than ever. Only the best possible data can enable the people who matter to make the right decisions and take effective action. And that’s exactly what we have to offer: the consistent, up-to-date and highly accurate data you need to maximise the potential of your operations and investments worldwide.