The Centre d’Etudes Spatiales de la Biosphère (CESBIO) announces the
SMOS TRAINING SESSION
5 – 9 November 2012Toulouse, France,
also sponsored by CNES and ESA
An opportunity to learn how to work with Soil Moisture, Ocean Salinity and Brightness Temperature products from this pioneering satellite mission.
The technical program will include:• Theoretical background on the SMOS mission:- An introduction to SMOS orbit and measurement characteristics- How are soil moisture and ocean salinity obtained from satellite measurements? The data processing chain: from measurements, to brightness temperatures, to soil moisture, and ocean salinity products- Caveats and pitfalls to avoid- How to make the most of the data itself• Practical training sessions for each SMOS product including:- Accessing data- Working with the products and understanding their contents- Data quality checking (flags & data filtering)- Key tools and software for ease of data manipulation- Exercises guided by the SMOS team at CESBIO and experts from partner institutions- Installing and running the soil moisture and/or ocean salinity retrieval processorsCosts:The training itself is free and lunches will be provided. However, participants will have to pay their own expenses for travel, accommodation, breakfast and evening meals. Training materials including data sets, documentation and scripts will be provided .Important Dates:The course will take place from the afternoon of 5th November to the morning of 9th November, 2012, and will be held in Toulouse, France.Applications should be sent to ‘smos-training-course@cesbio.cnes.fr’, stating name, institution, area of interest and experience with SMOS data, no later than 31st August 2012. A response will be given on 7th September 2012.The maximum number of workshop participants is limited to 15. If a higher number of applications are received then places will be allocated as follows: (1) limited to one person per institution, and (2) according to order of application.ESA will financially support the attendance of students to the training session held at CESBIO at a level of up to €1000 for each selected attendee. Students should apply for financial support through their response to this announcement, elaborating their suitability to receive such support by outlining both:- their present and future research interests involving SMOS- the benefit the course would provide them with for their researchIf you have any questions, please send an e-mail to ‘smos-training-course@cesbio.cnes.fr’. More detailed information on the training content will be available at the end of June 2012 and posted here on the SMOS blog