Smos Retrievals of Soil Freezing and Thawing and its Applications

The Finnish Meteorological Institute, together with Gamma Remote Sensing, Switzerland, has developed a global soil freeze/thaw detection algorithm using passive L-band microwave observations from the European Space Agency's Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS) mission. The current product gives the soil state as “frozen”, “partially frozen”, or “thawed”. Estimates for a given season are derived after each winter period. An operational product with a latency of one day is under development. Global information on soil freezing and thawing has many applications; e.g. in evaluation or as an input prior in carbon and climate models, soil carrying capacity analysis, and hydrological models.