The effect of urban cover fraction on the retrieval of space-borne surface soil moisture at L-band

Abstract

The world's first satellite dedicated to soil moisture measurement was launched by the European Space Agency on 2nd November 2009. One objective of this Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS) mission is to obtain global near-surface (top ∼5 cm) soil moisture every 2 to 3 days with a target accuracy of 0.04 m 3/m 3. To achieve this goal, the Microwave Imaging Radiometer with Aperture Synthesis (MIRAS) mounted on SMOS is used to observe the microwave emission from the Earth's surface at L-band (∼1.4 GHz) with a spatial resolution of ∼45 km. The soil moisture and vegetation water content are then retrieved simultaneously from fully-polarized brightness temperature observations at multiple inci..