Soil Moisture Products from C-band Scatterometers: from Ers-1/2 to Metop

Based on ERS-1/2 scatterometer data from 1992 to 2000, work carried out at the Institute of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing (Vienna University of Technology) resulted in a multi-year, global, remotely sensed soil moisture dataset. An exciting aspect of these developments is that the ERS scatterometer instrument finds an operational continuation in ASCAT, the Advanced Scatterometer onboard the upcoming series of MetOp satellites. This paper describes the conditions of applying the soil moisture retrieval methods to future ASCAT data, thus turning the global soil moisture dataset into an important operational, long-term, near real-time, continuous and consistent resource serving the hydrometeorological, agricultural and climatological communities. Differences between the two instruments are reviewed, pointing out their possible impact on the measurement characteristics and the resulting soil moisture data.