ESA has awarded a Living Planet Postdoc fellowship 2015 to Matthias Forkel. The study called “CCI data for assessing SOil moisture controls on FIre Emissions (CCI4SOFIE)” was submitted by Wouter Dorigo (TU Wien; ESA CCI soil moisture), Matthias Forkel (MPI Biogeochemistry), Guido van der Werf (VU Amsterdam; ESA CCI Fire), and Richard de Jeu (Transmissivity; ESA CCI soil moisture) and will assess the role of soil moisture in controlling fire ignition, spread, and emissions into the atmosphere (e.g. CO2, NOx). Read more »

The user uptake of the CCI Soil Moisture ECV data set is reflected in the overwhelming response to a special issue on “the advances in the validation and application of remotely sensed soil moisture” in the International Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinformations, edited by two CCI science team members, Richard de Jeu and Wouter Dorigo.

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We are pleased to announce the publication of ESA CCI SM v02.2 which extends the data record until December of 2014 and now covers a period of 36 years. The new release also has some new features including improved soil moisture dynamics, a better spatial coverage, and an improved inter-calibration between the different satellites. Read more »

Soil moisture matters – this was now also confirmed by NOAA in the latest 2014 State of the Climate / BAMS report. Read more »

The second progress meeting (PM 2) in Phase 2 was hosted by the Norwegian Institute for Air Research (NILU) in Oslo, Norway from 18-19th June 2015.

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'Since 1978 we have satellites gathering data on soil moisture. More than 35 years of data. We  need to make better use of that. So we're building datasets that help us better understand droughts, and predict them.' Read more »

The Remote Sensing Research Group at the Department of Geodesy of the Vienna University of Technology invites applications for a PhD-student and Postdoctoral researcher position within the EO-WAVE project. Read more »

With the overarching goal of Phase 1 (2012-14) achieved, we are very happy to announce that the CCI SM project is now (Jan 2015) successfully in Phase 2. The Earth Observation Data Centre for Water Resources Monitoring GmbH (EODC) takes pride in its role as the prime contractor for this phase, with the rest of the consortium remaining largely unchanged from the Phase 1 team. Read more »

On 23 January 2015 Wouter Dorigo, co-science lead and Earth Observation lead of the CCI soil moisture team, received the Science Award of the Vienna University of Technology for his outstanding research on soil moisture and climate. Read more »

Due to a few minor changes to the soil moisture product, an updated version is now available. For more information on the changes, please check the readme.txt and changelog.txt files before downloading the data set.