I am very pleased to announce that the new SMOS-IC soil moisture product is now available as a science product on the CATDS:
The SMOS INRA-CESBIO (SMOS-IC) algorithm was designed by INRA (Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique) and CESBIO (Centre d’Etudes Spatiales de la BIOsphère) to perform global retrievals of SM and L-VOD using some simplifications with respect to the Level 2 ESA algorithm. The SMOS-IC algorithm and dataset is described in Fernandez-Moran et al. (2017). SMOS -IC was designed on the same basis as the level 2 SM algorithm, i.e., L-MEB (Wigneron et al, 2007). However, one of the main goals of the SMOS-IC product is to be as independent as possible from auxiliary data so as to be more robust and less impacted by potential uncertainties in the afore mentioned auxiliary data sets. It also differs from the SMOS Level 2 product in the treatment of retrievals over regions with a heterogeneous land cover (partially forested areas). Specifically, SMOS-IC does not account for corrections associated with the antenna pattern and the complex SMOS viewing angle geometry. It considers pixels as homogeneous.
The current version is 105 and it is provided in the 25km EASEv2 grid, as netcdf format. SMOS IC is a scientific product delivered by the CATDS, i.e. meaning it is not updated on a daily basis as an operational product for the time being.
We re looking forward to receiving your feed back as we intend to make it an operational product soon.
We will soon deploy the companion SMOS-IC VOD (vegetation Optical Depth) product as well as a corresponding Level 3 for both SM and VOD obtained with SMOS-IC
Also Note that very soon we will deploy another new product (yes), i.e., SMOS brightness temperature in polar projection