Global soil moisture history, 2007 to now (Copernicus)
What it measures. Reorganises the daily Soil Water Index into long, continuous records at each grid point, including the moisture value plus quality and surface-state flags.
How it's made. ESA Copernicus reformats the ASCAT-derived data from the Metop satellites onto a 12.5-kilometre global grid, spanning 2007 to the present.
How & where you'd use it. Built for researchers studying trends in soil wetness over time, such as long-term drought patterns and climate change effects.
What's measured
Coverage & cadence
- Time span2007-01-01 → 2024-12-31
- Spatial extent-180, -90, 180, 90
- FormatsNetCDF
What you can do with it
- Follow rainfall, floods and surface-water extent
- Track soil moisture and the onset of drought
- Monitor lakes, rivers and groundwater storage
Official description
A reformatting of the daily Soil Water Index product that facilitates time series analysis, provided on a discrete global grid with 12.5 km spacing. For each grid point and observation time in the full time series from 2007 to present, the SWI, quality flag, and Surface State Flag values are provided.
Get the data
# ESA Copernicus Data Space — open STAC API (free account)
from pystac_client import Client
cat = Client.open("https://stac.dataspace.copernicus.eu/v1")
search = cat.search(
collections=["clms_swi-timeseries_global_12.5km_daily_v3"], # add _cog or _nc for a format variant
bbox=(-10, 35, 30, 60), # your area (W,S,E,N)
datetime="2024-01-01/2024-12-31",
)
items = list(search.items()) # then read assets with rioxarray / xarrayBrowsing the Copernicus STAC is open; downloading bytes needs a free Copernicus Data Space account.
Official links
- Open data source Copernicus STAC