Passive microwave radiometers onboard satellite can penetrate clouds and can monitor the global sea ice distribution on daily basis. It is not easy to extract sea ice thickness information from satellite data. In 2012, the authors have developed a method to detect thin ice area using the brightness temperature data derived from the passive microwave sensor AMSR-E onboard Aqua satellite. The bas...

Vegetation optical depth (VOD) retrieved from microwave remote sensing techniques has been used as an important proxy for monitoring the vegetation dynamics at large scales. In a first study we developed new X-VOD indice inversion of X-MEB model Microwave Scanning Radiometer 2 (AMSR2, 2012-present) observations. The Advanced EOS (AMSR-E, 2002–2011) and AMSR2 share many characteristics, such loc...

An effective blended Sea-Ice Concentration (SIC) product has been developed that utilizes ice concentrations from passive microwave and visible/infrared satellite instruments, specifically the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer-2 (AMSR2) Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS). The blending takes advantage of all-sky capability AMSR2 sensor high spatial resolution VIIRS, though it...

Semi-arid North-central Namibia has high potential for rice cultivation because large seasonal wetlands (oshana) form during the rainy season. Evaluating the distribution of surface water would reveal the area potentially suitable for rice cultivation. In this study, we detected the distribution of surface water with high spatial and temporal resolution by using two types of complementary satel...

Transition of freeze/thaw (F/T) affects land-atmospheric interactions and other biospheric dynamics. Global F/T statuses are normally monitored using microwave remote sensing, but at coarse resolutions (e.g., 25 km). Integration of coarse microwave remote sensing data with finer satellite products represents an opportunity to further enhance our ability to map F/T statuses regionally and global...

A good knowledge of the quality of the satellite soil moisture products is of great importance for their application and improvement. This paper examines the performance of eight satellite-based soil moisture products, including the Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) passive Level 3 (L3), the Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS) Centre Aval de Traitement des Données SMOS (CATDS) L3, the Jap...

Long-term surface soil moisture (SM) data are increasingly needed in water budget and energy balance analysis of watersheds. The performance nine remotely sensed SM products from AMSR2, SMOS SMAP missions, evaluated based on observations collected distributed observation networks the Heihe River Basin (HRB) China during 2013 to 2017. Results show that Level 3 Dual Channel Algorithm (DCA) retrie...

Abstract. Across spatial and temporal scales, sea-ice motion has implications for ship navigation, the thickness distribution, export to lower latitudes re-circulation in polar seas, among others. Satellite remote sensing is an effective way monitor drift globally daily, especially using wide swaths of passive microwave missions. Since late 1990s, many algorithms products have been developed th...