The Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer 2 (AMSR2) onboard the Global Change Observation Mission 1–Water (GCOM-W1) was launched by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) in May 2012. The AMSR2 is the follow-on model of the AMSR-Earth Observing System (AMSR-E) onboard the Aqua satellite. An assessment of the reliability of the soil moisture estimations from the newly launched passive se...

High quality soil moisture datasets are required for various environmental applications. The launch of the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer 2 (AMSR2) on board the Global Change Observation Mission 1—Water (GCOM-W1) in May 2012 has provided global near-surface soil moisture data, with an average revisit frequency of two days. Since AMSR2 is a new passive microwave system in operation, it i...

Passive microwave radiometers on-board satellites can penetrate clouds and can monitor the global sea ice distribution on daily basis. The authors have developed an algorithm to extract thin ice area in the Sea of Okhotsk from the passive microwave sensor AMSR2 on-board GCOM-W1 satellite. The algorithm uses the brightness temperature scatter plots of AMSR2 19GHz polarization difference(V–H) vs ...

The development and continuity of consistent long-term data records from similar overlapping satellite observations is critical for global monitoring and environmental change assessments. We developed an empirical approach for inter-calibration of satellite microwave brightness temperature (Tb) records over land from the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer for EOS (AMSR-E) and Microwave Scan...

Soil moisture products acquired from passive satellite missions have been widely applied in environmental processes. A primary challenge for the use of soil moisture products from passive sensors is their reliability. It is crucial to evaluate the reliability of those products before they can be routinely used at a global scale. In this paper, we evaluated the Soil Moisture Active/Passive (SMAP...

In recent years, different space agencies have launched satellite missions that carry passive microwave instruments on-board that can measure surface soil moisture. Three currently operational missions are the Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS) mission developed by the European Space Agency (ESA), the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer 2 (AMSR2) developed by the Japan Aerospace Explora...

For four decades, satellite-based passive microwave sensors have provided valuable snow water equivalent (SWE) monitoring at a global scale. Before continuous long-term SWE records can be used for scientific or applied purposes, consistency of SWE measurements among different sensors is required. SWE retrievals from two passive sensors currently operating, the Special Sensor Microwave Imager So...

The Global Change Observation Mission (GCOM) consists of two satellite observing systems and three generations to achieve global, comprehensive, and long-term Earth monitoring. The first satellite of the GCOM-W (Water) series will be GCOM-W1 with the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer-2 (AMSR2) onboard. AMSR2 is a successor of AMSR on the Advanced Earth Observing Satellite-II (ADEOS-II) and...

Spaceborne microwave remote sensing is widely used to monitor global environmental changes for understanding hydrological, ecological, and climate processes. A new global land parameter data record (LPDR) was generated using similar calibrated, multifrequency brightness temperature (Tb) retrievals from the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer for EOS (AMSR-E) and the Advanced Microwave Scanni...