Validation of the Effective Resolution of SMAP Enhanced Resolution Backscatter Products

NASA's Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) mission originally included both passive and active L-band measurement capability. It was the first satellite instrument to provide global radar observations of normalized cross section ( $\sigma ^{o}$ ) at multiple resolutions. The SMAP collected high resolution notation="LaTeX">$\sim$ 1–3 km) synthetic aperture (SAR) measurements over most Earth's land mass. simultaneously low 6×30 km “slice” full-footprint 29×35 measurements. operated for 83 days from day year 103 186 in 2015, before transmitter failed. designed make vegetation roughness support primary measure soil moisture, but data is useful a variety applications, particularly polar regions. Unfortunately, limitations download volume precluded downlink Antarctica, sea ice regions, various islands. Nonetheless, slice footprint were downlinked these areas. To better exploit this data, paper employs image reconstruction techniques create twice-daily enhanced images validate enhancement, are compared SAR results Greenland South America. new set provided science community cryosphere climate studies.