ESA Soil Moisture Climate Change Initiative (Soil_Moisture_cci): 'Passive' Product, Version 02.2

The Soil Moisture CCI 'Passive' dataset is one of the three datasets created as part of the European Space Agency's (ESA) Soil Moisture Essential Climate Variable (ECV) CCI project. The product has been created by fusing radiometer soil moisture products, merging data from the SMMR, SSM/I, TMI, AMSR-E, WindSat, and AMSR2 satellite instruments. 'Active' and 'Combined' products have also been created, the 'Active' product being a fusion of AMI-WS and ASCAT derived scatterometer products and the 'Combined Product' being a blended product based on the former two data sets. The v02.2 Passive product presents a global coverage of surface soil moisture at a spatial resolution of 0.25 degrees. The product is provided in volumetric units [m3 m-3] and covers the period (yyyy-mm-dd) 1978-11-01 to 2014-12-31. It consists of global daily images stored within yearly folders and are NetCDF-4 classic file formatted. For information regarding the theoretical and algorithmic base of the product, please see the Algorithm Theoretical Baseline Document version or the paper by Wagner 2012, both available in the documentation section. Other additional reference documents and information relating to the dataset can also be found on the CCI Soil Moisture project web site or within the Product Specification Document. The data set should be cited using all three of the following references: 1. Liu, Y. Y., W. A. Dorigo, et al. (2012). "Trend-preserving blending of passive and active microwave soil moisture retrievals." Remote Sensing of Environment 123: 280-297. 2. Liu, Y. Y., Parinussa, R. M., Dorigo, W. A., De Jeu, R. A. M., Wagner, W., van Dijk, A. I. J. M., McCabe, M. F., Evans, J. P. (2011). Developing an improved soil moisture dataset by blending passive and active microwave satellite-based retrievals. Hydrology and Earth System Sciences, 15, 425-436 3. Wagner, W., W. Dorigo, R. de Jeu, D. Fernandez, J. Benveniste, E. Haas, M. Ertl (2012). Fusion of active and passive microwave observations to create an Essential Climate Variable data record on soil moisture. ISPRS Annals of the Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences (ISPRS Annals), Volume I-7, XXII ISPRS Congress, Melbourne, Australia, 25 August-1 September 2012, 315-321