After more than three years of continuous operation at ESAC, the Spanish SMOS level 3 and 4 Production and distribution Centre (CP34) has been moved, due to programmatic and funding constrains, to the SMOS Barcelona Expert Center (SMOS-BEC). From BEC, where additional value added maps (e.g. regional 1 km resolution soil moisture products) are being built and generated for some time now, CP34 will continue to provide soil moisture and ocean salinity maps to the international research community.
As from July 2013, CP34 operations have been switched off at ESAC and SMOS level 3 and 4 products, including several recent improvements, are directly delivered at SMOS-BEC in a more user-friendly format (NetCDF). Both maps browsing and data files downloading are available.
At present, level 3 maps are generated in a lat/lon regular quarter of degree grid. Ocean salinity binned maps of 3 days and 9 days averages generated every 3 days, monthly, seasonal (quaterly) and annual products are served. Optimally interpolated and fused (with singularity exponents extracted from SST data) maps are also available. Two types of datasets can be downloaded, i.e., the operational (in near-real-time) and the reprocessed (from 2010) versions. Auxiliary singularity exponents maps can also be downloaded.
Over land, daily 0.25-degree global (operational and reprocessed) and 12-hourly 1-km regional (in near-real-time and delayed mode) soil moisture maps are currently distributed. The latter are currently limited to the Iberian peninsula. More soil moisture products, including high-resolution maps in other regions of the world, will soon be available.
A detailed description of the products can be found at BEC-SMOS-0001-PD PDF document
We take the opportunity to thank ESA and the SMOS DPGS operators for hosting and running CP34 at ESAC. We hope that users will appreciate the new CP34-BEC service and encourage us to improve the current products as well as to define and implement new SMOS-derived products for a wider variety of applications.