The 20th Webinar on the EO AFRICA R&D Facility Webinar Series is now available in our YouTube channel:
Using the new H SAF 6.25km ASCAT soil moisture data for drought monitoring
The ASCAT soil moisture service, offered by EUMETSAT, is the longest-standing operational satellite-based soil moisture services. ASCAT, which stands for Advanced Scatterometer, is an active microwave sensor onboard a series of three METOP satellites. As one of the primary microwave sensors for global soil moisture retrieval, ASCAT has been instrumental in monitoring soil moisture on a worldwide scale. The near-real-time ASCAT soil moisture service (< 3h), launched in 2008, was the first of its kind and was later incorporated into the Satellite Application Facility for Support to Operational Hydrology and Water Management (H SAF). Recently, the ASCAT soil moisture retrieval algorithm was updated, marking the biggest product improvements since the inception of the service:
- enhanced spatial sampling (6.25 km instead of 12.5 km),
- improved anomaly detection thanks to algorithms that account for land cover changes,
- better modelling of seasonal vegetation effects,
- new data format that facilitates easier comparison of near-real-time data with historical time series.
The webinar presents the key changes and explain how they contribute to improved drought monitoring.
The webinar was executed under the framework of the EO AFRICA R&D Facility by the Vienna University of Technology (TU Wien)
You can find the recording of the webinar in our YouTube Channel or you can watch it here: