The Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity Mission- Overview on calibration and validation activities -

Susanne MecklenburgSMOS Mission Manager

Steven Delwart and Catherine Bouzinac

IGARSS, Hawaii, 29 July 2010

The first months of SMOS …

2 November: Launch from Plesetsk, Russia, injection orbit very close to target, good pointing and stability

3 November: Antenna deployment

17 November: Instrument switch-on, 1st download over ESAC, first image

Commissioning phase finished at the end of May

NOW Routine phase has started, handover between development and operations teams

CNES – ToulouseSatellite Operations

ESAC – VillafrancaData Processing Ground Segment &X-Band Acquisition Station, Instrument Operations

ESRIN – FrascatiUser Services & Mission management

ESTEC - NoordwijkPost Launch Support Office

Kiruna StationLong-term ArchiveReprocessing CentreS-Band Acquisition

Svalbard StationNRT Acquisition Station

Science and Near-Real Time users

Responsible agencies in operations phase

ESA – responsible for overall coordination and funding of mission and ground segment operations

CNES – responsible for running and funding satellite operations from the Mission Operations Centre at CNES Toulouse (with ESA contribution for specific payload operations)

SMOS status

Space and ground system have been tested in the commissioning phase

Payload and platform functioning well with minor anomalies

Ground segment is acquiring and processing data up to level 2 and providing data in NRT to ECMWF

Data availability First Level 1C products (and some data sets

for level 2) released to cal & val PIs mid April General release of L1C products (brightness

temperatures) 23 July 2010 General release of L2 products (soil moisture

and ocean salinity) planned for September

2010

1. Calibration activities

Instrument calibration and performance

2. Validation activities

ESA CalVal AO for SMOS in 2005

Organisation of the validation process at ESA Expert Support Laboratories Campaigns Support to key validation sites ELBARA instruments

National Expert Centres (level 3 & 4 data products)

Collaboration with Aquarius and SMAP

Validation methodology for soil moisture and ocean Salinity

Calibration & validation activities

Dedicated sessions

SMOS and ocean surface salinity TH3.LO2 SMOS: the beginning of a L-Band generation of global remote sensed soil moisture observations FR1.L10 SMOS soil moisture science and products FR3.L10

• 30 proposals involving soil moisture • 14 proposal involving ocean salinity • 3 proposals involve soil moisture and ocean salinity• 3 proposals involve brightness temperature only• 1 proposal for calibration of geolocalisation biases

SMOS Validation and Retrieval Team

Country Proposals Country ProposalsFrance 7 Austria 1

US 6 China 1Spain 5 Finland 1

Netherlands 3 Poland 1Germany 3 Denmark 1Canada 2 Uruguay 1

Australia 2 Japan 1India 2 Brazil 1Italy 2 Norway 1UK 2 ECMWF 1

43 PIs from 19 countries

Soil moisture test sites

Ocean salinity test sites

Expert Support Laboratories are responsible for“L1& L2 algorithm development, evolution and validation”.

Reconstruction and Calibration – level 1Observatoire Midi-Pyrenees (F)

Universitat Politecnica Catalunya (E)Industrial partner: Deimos (P)

Sea Surface Salinity – Level 2Laboratoire d’Oceanographie et de Climatologie (LOCEAN) (F)

Institut de Ciències del Mar CMIMA-CSIC (ICM) (E)Institut français de recherche pour l'exploitation de la mer (IFREMER) (F)

Industrial partner: Argans (UK)

Soil Moisture – Level 2Centre d’Etudes Spatiales de la Biosphere (CESBIO) (F)

Institut Pierre Simon Laplace (IPSL) (F)Institut National de Recherche Agronomique (INRA) (F)

Tor Vergata University (I)Industrial partner: Array (CND)

Expert Support Laboratories

National Expert Centers are responsible for“SMOS L3 & L4 algorithm development, evolution and validation”

National Expert Centres CATDS (F) Soil Moisture EC - CESBIO - Y. Kerr

CATDS (F) Ocean Salinity EC - IFREMER - N. Reul

CP-34 (E) Barcelona Expert Centre BEC - ICM-UPC - J. Font

“Collaborating Agencies do not have any formal responsibility in SMOS”

Collaborating AgenciesAquarius and SMAP projects - NASA

Expert Centres

WISE 2000/2001 Wind and Salinity Experiment in 2000/2001, at offshore oil drilling platform near Barcelona to provide multi-angular polarimetric brightness temperature under different wind/wave conditions

LOSAC 2001 Ocean salinity airborne campaign in 2001/2003, with L-band radiometer EMIRAD from Technical University of Denmark, several flights with variable wind conditions; discovery of wiggles, investigating azimuthal dependence of the two first Stokes parameters

EUROSTARRS 2001 US Salinity Temperature and Roughness Remote Scanner (STARRS) was exploited during airborne campaign over France and Spain in 2001 providing airborne L-band observations over large areas

FROG Foam Rain Oil Slicks and GPS reflexions in 2003, measuring L-Band polarimetric emission under controlled (foam and rain) conditions (campaign not funded by ESA)

SMOSREX Surface Monitoring of the Soil Reservoir Experiment near Toulouse (campaign not funded by ESA) CESBIO and CNRM fund this activity

CoSMOS 2005 Airborne campaign in cooperation with the Australian’s National Airborne Field Experiment (NAFE 05) at the Goulburn River Catchment in November 2005; site extensively monitored and studied for SM

COSMOS 2006 Airborne campaign in Norway (North Sea) in 2006 to acquire data under different oceanographic conditions for sea surface salinity retrieval

SEA-ICE 2007 Airborne campaign in the Gulf of Bothnia (Finland) in March 2007 to acquire L-band measurements over sea-ice and test the retrieval of ice types and ice thickness

Demonstrator 2007 Airborne campaign in August 2007 to perform dual-pol measurements and assess absolute accuracy of HUT2D, the interferometric radiometer of Helsinki University of Technology, and demonstrate the retrieval of a sea surface salinity gradient off the coast of Helsinki using an interferometric radiometer.

DOMEX 2005 - 2008 Tower-based radiometric measurements in Antarctica, vicarious calibration of brightness temperature over the Dome Concordia area

Rehearsal 2008 Airborne campaign in April 2008 over the key soil moisture validation sites of SMOS, in Germany and Spain

Data sets and reports available on earth.esa.int/campaignsand the SMOS Cal/Val portal

Sea Surface SalinitySoil MoistureCryosphere

ESA EO Campaigns

Campaigns during 2010

Airborne campaigns• ESA campaign – similar to rehearsal campaign,

validate L1 brightness temperature and L2 soil

moisture retrieval with SkyVan, in May-June 2010• SW Australia – University of Melbourne,

campaign performed in Feb 2010 • CAROLS: Combined Airborne Radio-instruments

for Ocean and Land Studies, over South-West

France and Bay of Biscay, funded by CNES – over

Valencia Anchor Site, funded by ESA; campaign

from April to July 2010, with ATR-42

Ground campaigns• In-situ measurements and upscaling to SMOS

pixel at individual PI sites in different areas of the

globe (e.g. Sahel, Tibet, Duero, Oklahoma, etc)

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22

ESA key validation sites for soil moisture

Valencia Anchor Site, Spain

- typical Mediterranean sparse vegetation ecosystem, mainly bare soil and limited vegetation;- the vegetation consists mainly of vineyards, pine trees and shrubs and is thus comparatively uniform with regard to hydrological parameters;- the site is well instrumented and has been the location of other field campaigns.

image © E.Lopez Baeza

Upper Danube Catchment, Germany

- Typical temperate continental ecosystem;- Field measurements include three eddy correlation towers for wind, H2O and CO2 and 60 time delay reflection soil moisture probes for continuous measurements.

Image © A.Loew

ELBARA – L-Band ground based radiometer

Elbara versus SMOS at Sodankylä

• Elbara measurements at fixed 53 angle of incidence (mineral soil site)

• SMOS data selected representing the same range of incidence angles (48 – 58)

• Elbara observations depict the large diurnal change of Tb between wet and dry snow cover conditions

• During late April snow on bogs and lakes within the SMOS pixel may not refreeze during the night anymore => small bias observed between SMOS- and Elbara-derived Stokes I parameter

Jouni Pulliainen

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• Five networks have been inventoried in detail for Phase I

MESONET

REMEDHUS

SMOSMANIA

OzNet (2)

International Soil Moisture Network Data Base

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• Four other networks have been inventoried for future phase II

Valencia Anchor Station

Upper Danube cal/val siteTERENO

Soil Climate Analysis Network

International Soil Moisture Network Data BasePhase 2

Ocean Salinity Validation

Match-up SMOS L2 SSS and in-situ database

ARGO: more than 3300 floats

GDP: Global Drifter Program, surface buoys

Tropical mooring arrays: TAO, PIRATA, RAMA

ARGO Enhanced SSS Floats

• Objectives

– Provide an external ice-sheet target calibration reference, and serve as a basis for calibration monitoring

– Validation of Tb SMOS products– Extension of sampling time during all

2010 minimum (Annual cycle spanning summer/winter)

• Experiment details

– Radiometer RADOMEX has been developed by IFAC Florence (I)

– Thermal subsystem has undergone major upgrade wrt DOMEX-1 version, with the support of the ESTEC Thermal Division.

– Measurements since end 2008– Analysis of SMOS Tb compared to

RADOMEX Tb and monitoring of variations

Observations at DOME-C station

Illustration of stability of brightness temperature with time

Antarctic plateau around Dome C good candidate for stability monitoring and across fov consistency check

© IFAC Florence

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3000

4000

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-200 -150 -100 -50 0 50 100 150 200

mean: -6.39 std: 39.9min: -234 max: 209

Total number of points: 121670DB column: fg_depar@body

H-pol

ECMWF data assimilation study

Integration of SMOS data into ECMWF forecasting model

First guess departure: observation – model for 12 hours and all incidence angles

Study objectives:- Operational monitoring of global NRT brightness temperatures- Quantification of the impact of SMOS observations on the forecast skill

SMOS science studies

International Soil Moisture Network Study: provide in-situ soil moisture observations for validation of SMOS (and other satellite) data

ECMWF Data Assimilation Study: assimilation of SMOS data into forecast models

SMOS Sea Ice Study: L Band radiometry for sea ice retrievals

SMALT: Soil moisture from altimetry

ESA internal support to science studies (~€1M, including studies on river outflow and assimilation, hydrology feasibility studies (open call for ideas))

Research Fellows in ESTEC and ESRIN

Pol-Ice Campaign, Baltic Sea 2007

SMOS Validation and Retrieval Team Workshop

Workshop to take place on 29-30 November 2010 in ESRIN, Frascati, Italy

Oral presentations/posters: abstract to be send to catherine.bouzinac@esa.int before 30 August 2010

Acceptance of abstracts as oral or poster will be confirmed by 20 September 2010.

Detailed agenda by end of September

Further information on earth.esa.int/smos

For information contactCatherine.bouzinac@esa.int or susanne.mecklenburg@esa.int

Level 0 – raw data

Level 1C – Brightness Temperatures (NRT for operational users, browse product)

Soil Moisture - Level 2 – Ocean Salinity

Soil Moisture - Level 3 – Sea Surface SalinityGlobal, single-instrument

Soil Moisture - Level 4 - Sea Surface SalinityGlobal, multi-instrument

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Image reconstruction

Scientific knowledge &assumptions & uncertainties; models and auxiliary data

French and Spanish National Expert Centres

Centre Aval de Traitement des Donnees SMOS (CATDS)For Soil Moisture – CESBIOYann KerrFor Sea Surface Salinity –IFREMER

Barcelona Expert Centre atICM-UPC, Jordi Font

Available data products

How to get SMOS data

All SMOS data are systematically processed into L1 and L2 products at the DPGS/ESAC Copy of data products is sent to LTA at Kiruna for long term archiving and cataloguing LTA also provides online access for the most recent products (rolling on-line archive) Registered users can obtain SMOS data products in two ways:

1. By subscribing to the systematic distribution of products (“subscription service”): all data

products required by the user are made available via FTP, to be collected by the user, or

2. By searching the data product catalogue (EOLI) and submitting an order for selected

archived products (limited to 20 products per orders). The catalogue also provides access

(immediate download) to the most recent data through the rolling on-line archive at LTA

Subscription (= your research project relies on a continuous and regular flow of data) L1 (A,B,C) and L2 data products 10 auxiliary data types submission of your full proposal through the EOPI portal ESA’s Help Desk (EOHelp@eo.esa.int) will contact you to collect your data requirements and set-up the subscription for you.data delivery via pull from a FTP

EOLIhttp://earth.esa.int/EOLi/EOLi.html. (= your research project relies on a one-off data ordering/ you need limited amount of data) L1 (B,C) and L2 data products (present and previous baseline) limited amount of auxiliary data types registration through the EOPI portal search entire SMOS data catalogue, order or download data directly (both limited access) ESA’s Help Desk (EOHelp@eo.esa.int) will send notification where data can be collected.

- SMOS Data viewer ftp://193.146.123.163/smos/software/SMOSView/ Microscopic & detailed view for products and auxiliary data files

-SMOS Tool Box (BEAM)http://www.brockmann-consult.de/beam-wiki/display/SBOX/SMOS+Toolbox+for+BEAMEnables reading, visualisation and basic analysis of SMOS L1C & 2 products

- SMOS Global Mapping Tool ftp://193.146.123.163/smos/software/GMT/Macroscopic view for L1 and L2 Products

- SMOS Comparison Tool ftp://193.146.123.163/smos/software/SCOT/ (to be delivered in the next weeks)SCoT provides a “Delta” view for L1 Products

- SMOS XML R/WAPIftp://193.146.123.163/smos/software/XML_RW_API/Library in C++ to read and write SMOS Products and auxiliary file developed by

INDRA Espacio S.A.

SMOS Tools

SMOS webpageearth.esa.int/smos

Information on - Data quality, products and release dates- Processors and relevant documentation- Instrument configuration (commissioning and routine)- Mission planning- Events (SVRT workshop etc)- Available tools (Toolbox, Data viewer and others)- link to CESBIO SMOS blog

Data access

eopi.esa.int (proposal or registration) http://earth.esa.int/EOLi/EOLi.html (catalogue)

Campaign data

earth.esa.int/campaigns

Thank you for your attention!