How wet the topsoil is (AMSR-E/AMSR2, 25 km) — AU_Land

In plain English

What it measures. How much moisture is in the top layer of soil, reported in 25 km map squares using two different calculation approaches.

How it's made. Estimated from microwave 'brightness temperature' readings (how a surface looks to the sensor) by the AMSR-E and AMSR2 instruments on the Aqua and GCOM-W1 satellites, with the two sensors carefully matched to work as one.

How & where you'd use it. Supports drought monitoring, farming and water management, weather forecasting, and studies of how land and atmosphere exchange water.

What's measured

SPECTRAL/ENGINEERING › INFRARED WAVELENGTHS › BRIGHTNESS TEMPERATURELAND SURFACE › SOILS › SOIL MOISTURE/WATER CONTENTBIOSPHERE › VEGETATION › PLANT CHARACTERISTICS › VEGETATION WATER CONTENT

Coverage & cadence

Time span2002-06-01 → 2011-10-04
Measured byAqua (AMSR-E) · GCOM-W1 (AMSR2)
Processing levelLevel 2B
Spatial extent-180, -89.24, 180, 89.24
FormatsHDF-EOS5
StatusCOMPLETE

What you can do with it

Track deforestation, fire scars and land-cover change
Monitor crop and vegetation health (NDVI/EVI)
Map how built-up vs. green an area is over time

Official description

This Level-2B AMSR Unified product contains surface soil moisture at 25 km resolution, estimated from AMSR-E and AMSR2 brightness temperature observations using two different approaches: the Normalized Polarization Difference (NPD) algorithm and the Single Channel Algorithm (SCA). Data are provided in the NSIDC EASE-Grid Global projection. Soil moisture estimates are derived from AMSR-E and AMSR2 data which have been spatially resampled by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) to intercalibrate, or “unify,” the two sensors.

Get the data

au_land_access.py

import earthaccess
earthaccess.login(strategy="netrc")          # free Earthdata Login

results = earthaccess.search_data(
    short_name="AU_Land",
    version="1",
    bounding_box=(-122.5, 37.2, -121.8, 37.9),  # your area (W,S,E,N)
    temporal=("2024-01-01", "2024-12-31"),       # your dates
)
files = earthaccess.open(results)   # stream straight from NSIDC_CPRD

Browsing CMR needs no login. Downloading or streaming bytes needs a free Earthdata Login + the earthaccess package.

What's measured

Coverage & cadence

What you can do with it

Get the data

Official links