Summary

Description

This Level 2 (swath) data set¿s land surface parameters, surface soil moisture, land surface (skin) temperature, and vegetation water content, are derived from polarimetric microwave radiometer data from WindSat, onboard the Naval Research Laboratory's Coriolis satellite, using the Land Parameter Retrieval Model (LPRM). Each swath is packaged with associated geolocation fields. The data set covers the period from October 2007 to July 2012, at the spatial resolution (nominally about 53 and 30 km, respectively) of WindSat's C and X bands (6.8 and 10.7 GHz, respectively). The data are stored in netCDF format. 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 WindSat's Ka-band (37.0 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 WindSat brightness temperatures (sdrLowRes) product, archived at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory (NRL).