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Full catalog/NSIDC-0738
NSIDC-0738·v3·dataset

Microwave brightness, sharpened, twice daily (SMAP)

SMAP Radiometer Twice-Daily rSIR-Enhanced EASE-Grid 2.0 Brightness Temperatures V003
land NASA NSIDC_CPRD Level 3 active netCDF-4
In plain English

What it measures. How much natural microwave energy different surfaces give off, expressed as a 'brightness temperature' - essentially how warm a surface looks to the sensor at microwave wavelengths. The data come twice a day at a sharpened, finer resolution than the standard product.

How it's made. Made by computationally reconstructing (sharpening) the standard SMAP radiometer measurements onto finer map grids, with versions for the polar regions and mid-latitudes.

How & where you'd use it. Useful for studying soil moisture, snow, ice, and other surface conditions, especially when researchers want more spatial detail than the standard SMAP grids provide.

What's measured

SPECTRAL/ENGINEERING › MICROWAVE › BRIGHTNESS TEMPERATURE

Coverage & cadence

  • Time span2015-03-31 → ongoing
  • Measured bySMAP (SMAP L-BAND RADIOMETER)
  • Processing levelLevel 3
  • Spatial extent-180, -90, 180, 90
  • FormatsnetCDF-4
  • StatusACTIVE

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 data set contains twice-daily, enhanced-resolution brightness temperature data produced by image reconstruction of the standard SMAP product, SMAP L1B Radiometer Half-Orbit Time-Ordered Brightness Temperatures (SPL1BTB). Data are available in the Northern Hemisphere, Southern Hemisphere, Temperate, and Mid-Latitude (subset of Global) EASE-Grid 2.0 projections and on the 3 km, 3.125 km, 9 km, 25 km, and 36 km resolution grids. This is a companion product for the Calibrated Enhanced-Resolution Passive Microwave Daily EASE-Grid 2.0 Brightness Temperature ESDR data set. The same SIR technique is applied to derive brightness temperatures from the SMMR, AMSR-E, and SSM/I-SSMIS sensors as for that data set.

Get the data

nsidc-0738_access.py
import earthaccess
earthaccess.login(strategy="netrc")          # free Earthdata Login

results = earthaccess.search_data(
    short_name="NSIDC-0738",
    version="3",
    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.