<p> This Level-2 (L2) soil moisture product provides gridded estimates of global land surface conditions retrieved by both the Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) radar and radiometer during 6:00 a.m. descending half-orbit passes. Input SMAP L-band backscatter and brightness temperature data used to derive soil moisture are resampled to an Earth-fixed, global, cylindrical 9 km Equal-Area Scalable Earth Grid, Version 2.0 (EASE-Grid 2.0). A variety of ancillary data are also used as input, such as surface temperature, vegetation water content (VWC), and soil texture. </p>
<p>Note: These data are Beta-release quality, meaning that they have not undergone full validation and may still contain significant errors.</p>