NOAA Soil Moisture Operational Product System (SMOPS): Version 3.1 Updates and Validation

NOAA Soil Moisture Operational Product System (SMOPS) ingests most of the available operational soil moisture products from satellite sensors and produces a merged product that has much better spatial and temporal coverage. SMOPS has a 6-hour product with 3-hour data latency to meet near real-time needs, such as data assimilation in weather forecasting models, and a daily product with 6-hour data latency to meet some research needs. SMOPS product also carries the original soil moisture products from individual sensors so that users have an option to use a particular product from one sensor. This system has been launched since 2012 and experienced a number of version updates. Satellite sensors included in system for soil moisture production evolved from only WindSat, SMOS and ASCAT-A in SMOPS V1.0 to the most recent version, Version 3.1, that includes soil moisture products from SMOS, ASCAT-A, ASCAT-B, AMSR2, GMI and SMAP. In this study, we aim to evaluate SMOPS blended soil moisture product in this most recent version as well as all soil moisture products from individual sensors using ground observations collected from a number of soil moisture ground observation networks, such Soil Moisture Analysis Network (SCAN). The blending algorithm used in this system is also discussed and relative contribution from each individual sensor to the blended product is also evaluated.