Smos L1c and L2 Validation in Australia

Extensive airborne field campaigns (Australian Airborne Cal/val Experiments for SMOS – AACES [1]) were undertaken during the 2010 summer and winter seasons of the southern hemisphere. The purpose of those campaigns was the validation of the Level 1c (brightness temperature) and Level 2 (soil moisture) products of the ESA-led Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS) mission [2]. As SMOS is the first satellite to globally map Lband (1.4GHz) emissions from the Earth’s surface, and the first 2-dimensional interferometric microwave radiometer used for Earth observation, large scale and long-term validation campaigns have been conducted world-wide (eg. [3], [4], [5]), of which AACES is the most extensive. AACES combined large scale mediumresolution airborne L-band and spectral observations, along with high-resolution in-situ measurements of soil moisture across a 50,000km 2 area of the Murrumbidgee River catchment, located in south-eastern Australia. This paper presents a qualitative assessment of the SMOS brightness temperature and soil moisture products.