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Full catalog/WC_LSMEM_SOILM_025
WC_LSMEM_SOILM_025·v001·dataset

How wet the topsoil is (Aqua, daily, 0.25°)

AMSR-E/Aqua surface soil moisture (LSMEM) L3 1 day 0.25 degree x 0.25 degree V001 (WC_LSMEM_SOILM_025) at GES DISC
land NASA GES_DISC Level 3
In plain English

What it measures. How wet the top layer of soil is across the globe, day by day, in grid cells about 25 km across, covering the years 2002 to 2011 (with snow-covered areas left out).

How it's made. Derived from microwave signals measured by the AMSR-E instrument on NASA's Aqua satellite, with a physics-based model (LSMEM) turning the microwave brightness into soil-moisture values.

How & where you'd use it. Useful for drought monitoring, agriculture, and climate studies that need a consistent multi-year record of how moist the land surface is.

What's measured

LAND SURFACE › SOILS › SOIL MOISTURE/WATER CONTENT

Coverage & cadence

  • Time span2002-06-19 → 2011-09-27
  • Measured byAqua (AMSR-E)
  • Processing levelLevel 3
  • Spatial extent-180, -90, 180, 90
  • 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

AMSR-E/Aqua surface soil moisture (LSMEM) L3 1 day 0.25 degree x 0.25 degree V001 is a global, 10-year (2002-2011) data set. It is created from soil moisture retrieved from passive microwave brightness temperatures measured by the 10.65 and 36.5 GHz radiometers on the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer-Earth Observing System (AMSR-E) sensor on the NASA Aqua satellite. The retrieval algorithm is based on Princeton's Land Surface Microwave Emission Model (LSMEM), a physically-based radiative transfer model, and serves as the core algorithm in the estimation procedure. To retrieve surface soil moisture, two unknowns, the soil moisture and the effective vegetation optical depth, are simultaneously solved from two radiative transfer equations in LSMEM, one for the 10.65 GHz horizontally-polarized brightness temperature and the other for the 10.65 GHz vertically-polarized brightness temperature. The land surface temperature required in the estimation procedure is estimated from the 36.5 GHz vertically-polarized brightness temperature, using a regression relationship. This soil moisture product does not include areas covered by snow, so the snow model is not described. Also, the atmosphere is assumed to have constant brightness temperatures; therefore, the atmosphere model is also not described.

Get the data

wc_lsmem_soilm_025_access.py
import earthaccess
earthaccess.login(strategy="netrc")          # free Earthdata Login

results = earthaccess.search_data(
    short_name="WC_LSMEM_SOILM_025",
    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.