PROGRAM SMAP_L2_to_obs

Overview

Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) passive microwave radiometer

to DART Observation Sequence Converter

This routine is designed to convert the SMAP L2 Radiometer Half-Orbit 36 km EASE-Grid Soil Moisture, Soil moisture product (Versions 4-8) to a DART observation sequence file.

Quoting the NSIDC:

This Level-2 (L2) soil moisture product provides estimates of global land surface conditions retrieved by the Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) passive microwave radiometer during 6:00 a.m. descending and 6:00 p.m. ascending half-orbit passes. SMAP L-band brightness temperatures are used to derive soil moisture data, which are then resampled to an Earth-fixed, global, cylindrical 36 km Equal-Area Scalable Earth Grid, Version 2.0 (EASE-Grid 2.0).

Data Set ID: SPL2SMP SMAP L2 Radiometer Half-Orbit 36 km EASE-Grid Soil Moisture

Surface soil moisture (0-5 cm) in m3/m3 derived from brightness temperatures (TBs) is output on a fixed global 36 km EASE-Grid 2.0. Also included are brightness temperatures in kelvin representing the weighted average of Level-1B brightness temperatures whose boresights fall within a 36 km EASE-Grid 2.0 cell.

Important

SMAP_L2_to_obs uses an observation error standard deviation of 0.01 m3/m3 or 20% of the soil moisture value, whatever is higher. These numbers have no scientific basis and should be thoroughly explored. The data files I have explored have a variable soil_moisture_error but these appear to be empty - i.e. full of _FillValue values. A better way of specifying the observation error standard deviation is needed.

Important

SMAP_L2_to_obs has only been thoroughly tested with the half-orbit files - these files have names like ‘SMAP_L2_SM_P_02526_D_20150723T070211_R12170_001.h5’.

Important

SMAP_L2_to_obs is not compatible with SMAP L3 files as they are formatted differently

The workflow is usually:

  1. Download the data for the period in question (see DATA SOURCES below)

  2. Build the DART executables with support for the soil moisture observations. This is done by running preprocess with obs_def_land_mod.f90 in the list of input_files for preprocess_nml.

  3. Convert each data file individually using SMAP_L2_to_obs

  4. Combine or subset all output files for the region and timeframe of interest into one file using program obs_sequence_tool

For some models (CLM, for example), it is required to reorganize the observation sequence files into a series of files that contains ONLY the observations for each assimilation. This can be achieved with the ~/models/clm/shell_scripts/makedaily.sh script. Since there are subtleties for each model, makedaily.sh is generally found in the shell_scripts directory of the model.

NAMELIST

This namelist is read from the file input.nml. Namelists start with an ampersand ‘&’ and terminate with a slash ‘/’. Character strings that contain a ‘/’ must be enclosed in quotes to prevent them from prematurely terminating the namelist.

&SMAP_L2_to_obs_nml
   input_file_list     = 'file_list.txt'
   obs_out_file        = 'obs_seq.out'
   max_num_input_files = 10
   verbose             = .false.
   /

Description of namelist variables:

Contents

Type

Description

input_file_list

character(len=256)

Name of the file containing the list of input data files. Each input data file name must be on a separate line. No blank lines are allowed. This may be a relative or absolute filename.

obs_out_file

character(len=256)

Name of the output observation sequence file.

max_num_input_files

integer

The maximum number of filenames in ‘input_file_list’ to convert. This should be a small number - converting all frequencies, all polarizations, both passes into one file is not recommended

verbose

logical

Print extra information during the SMAP_L2_to_obs execution.

Data Sources

The SMAP L2 Radiometer Half-Orbit 36 km EASE-Grid Soil Moisture, Version 4 data

Data Citation

The following example shows how to cite the use of this data set in a publication. For more information, see the Use and Copyright web page

O’Neill, P. E., S. Chan, E. G. Njoku, T. Jackson, and R. Bindlish. 2016. SMAP L2 Radiometer Half-Orbit 36 km EASE-Grid Soil Moisture, Version 4. [Indicate subset used]. Boulder, Colorado USA. NASA National Snow and Ice Data Center Distributed Active Archive Center. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.5067/XPJTJT812XFY. [Date Accessed].

PROGRAMS

The SMAP_L2_to_obs.f90 file is the source for the converter program. To compile and test, go into the work subdirectory and run the quickbuild.sh script to build the converter and a couple of general purpose utilities. PROGRAM advance_time helps with calendar and time computations, and the program obs_sequence_tool manipulates DART observation files once they have been created.

DECISIONS YOU MIGHT NEED TO MAKE

See the discussion in the Creating an obs_seq file from real observations introduction page about what options are available for the things you need to specify. These include setting a time, specifying an expected error, setting a location, and an observation type.

Terms of Use

DART software - Copyright UCAR. This open source software is provided by UCAR, “as is”, without charge, subject to all terms of use at http://www.image.ucar.edu/DAReS/DART/DART_download