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Full catalog/LPRM_AMSRE_SOILM2
LPRM_AMSRE_SOILM2·v002·dataset

How wet the soil is (Aqua)

AMSR-E/Aqua surface soil moisture (LPRM) L2B V002 (LPRM_AMSRE_SOILM2) at GES DISC
biosphere NASA GES_DISC Level 2
In plain English

What it measures. How wet the surface soil is, along with the land's skin temperature and the water content of vegetation, measured along each satellite pass.

How it's made. Derived from passive microwave readings by the AMSR-E instrument on NASA's Aqua satellite using a retrieval model; the record runs from 2002 until the sensor failed in 2011, at roughly 38-56 km detail.

How & where you'd use it. Supports drought monitoring, weather and climate studies, and understanding how moisture moves between land and atmosphere.

What's measured

BIOSPHERE › VEGETATION › PLANT CHARACTERISTICS › VEGETATION WATER CONTENTLAND SURFACE › SOILS › SOIL MOISTURE/WATER CONTENTLAND SURFACE › SURFACE THERMAL PROPERTIES › SKIN TEMPERATURE

Coverage & cadence

  • Time span2002-06-19 → 2011-10-03
  • Measured byAqua (AMSR-E)
  • Processing levelLevel 2
  • Spatial extent-180, -90, 180, 90
  • StatusCOMPLETE

What you can do with it

  • Map vegetation, forests and biomass
  • Monitor ecosystem productivity and carbon
  • Support habitat and biodiversity studies
Official description

AMSR-E/Aqua surface soil moisture (LPRM) L2B V002 is a Level 2 (swath) data set. Its land surface parameters, surface soil moisture, land surface (skin) temperature, and vegetation water content are derived from passive microwave remote sensing data from the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer-Earth Observing System (AMSR-E), using the Land Parameter Retrieval Model (LPRM). Each swath is packaged with associated geolocation fields. The data set covers the period from June 2002 to October 2011 (when the AMSR-E on the NASA EOS Aqua satellite stopped producing data due to a problem with the rotation of its antenna), at the spatial resolution (nominally 56 and 38 km, respectively) of AMSR-E's C and X bands (6.9 and 10.7 GHz, respectively). The LPRM is based on a forward radiative transfer model to retrieve surface soil moisture and vegetation optical depth. The land surface temperature is derived separately from the AMSR-E's Ka-band (36.5 GHz). A unique feature of this method is that it can be applied at any microwave frequency, making it very suitable to exploit all the available passive microwave data from various satellites. Input data are from the AMSR-E resampled brightness temperatures (AE_L2A) product, archived at the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC).

Get the data

lprm_amsre_soilm2_access.py
import earthaccess
earthaccess.login(strategy="netrc")          # free Earthdata Login

results = earthaccess.search_data(
    short_name="LPRM_AMSRE_SOILM2",
    version="002",
    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 GES_DISC
Browsing CMR needs no login. Downloading or streaming bytes needs a free Earthdata Login + the earthaccess package.