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Full catalog/LPRM_TMI_SOILM2
LPRM_TMI_SOILM2·v001·dataset

How wet the soil is (TRMM microwave)

TMI/TRMM surface soil moisture (LPRM) L2 V001 (LPRM_TMI_SOILM2) at GES DISC
land NASA GES_DISC Level 2
In plain English

What it measures. How wet the surface soil is, plus the land's skin temperature and the amount of water held in vegetation, along each satellite track at about 45-kilometer detail.

How it's made. Derived from the TRMM Microwave Imager's microwave measurements using the Land Parameter Retrieval Model, covering December 1997 to April 2015.

How & where you'd use it. Helps monitor soil moisture and land conditions across the tropics, supporting drought, agriculture and water-cycle research.

What's measured

LAND SURFACE › SURFACE THERMAL PROPERTIES › SKIN TEMPERATURELAND SURFACE › SOILS › SOIL MOISTURE/WATER CONTENTBIOSPHERE › VEGETATION › PLANT CHARACTERISTICS › VEGETATION WATER CONTENT

Coverage & cadence

  • Time span1997-12-07 → 2015-04-08
  • Measured byTRMM (TMI)
  • Processing levelLevel 2
  • Spatial extent-180, -40, 180, 40
  • 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

TMI/TRMM surface soil moisture (LPRM) L2 V001 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 Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) Microwave Imager (TMI), using the Land Parameter Retrieval Model (LPRM). Each swath is packaged with associated geolocation fields. The data set covers the period from December 1997 to April 2015 (when the instruments on the TRMM satellite were shut down in preparation for its reentry into the earth's atmosphere), at the spatial resolution (nominally 45 km) of TMI's X band (10.7 GHz). 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 TMI's Ka-band (37 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 TMI Brightness Temperatures (1B-11) product, archived at the Goddard Earth Sciences Data and Information Services Center (GES DISC).

Get the data

lprm_tmi_soilm2_access.py
import earthaccess
earthaccess.login(strategy="netrc")          # free Earthdata Login

results = earthaccess.search_data(
    short_name="LPRM_TMI_SOILM2",
    version="001",
    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.