ABSTRACT
Building upon the progress made in algorithmic research and improvements in sensor technologies, operational soil moisture products have increasingly become available over the past decade (Wagner et al. 2007b). The first global satellite-based soil moisture dataset that was freely shared with the user community was derived from backscatter measurements collected by the C-band scatterometer (ESCAT) on board the ERS-1 and ERS-2 satellites operated by the European Space Agency (ESA). It was first released in 2002 (Scipal et al. 2002) and after that it has been updated irregularly (Reimer et al. 2012). The ESCAT soil moisture dataset has been produced and distributed by the microwave remote sensing team of the Vienna University of Technology (TU Wien), and given that funding relied principally on research programs, it is a classical research product, that is, software development, dataset updating, and user support have all been done on a best effort basis, not yet having benefited from the more integrated and documented approach followed in
CONTENTS
20.1 Introduction ........................................................................................................................463 20.2 ASCAT Soil Moisture Service Operations .....................................................................465
