Delta Hydro

ESA CCI Soil Moisture

Active

The longest satellite soil moisture record available — merged active+passive retrievals back to 1978, free, no login.

by European Space Agency (CCI)

Pricing
Free
License
Free, no registration required
Commercial use
Permitted
Ecosystem
Python, NetCDF
Platform
Windows, macOS, Linux

About ESA CCI Soil Moisture

The ESA Climate Change Initiative Soil Moisture product merges retrievals from more than a dozen active (scatterometer) and passive (radiometer) satellite sensors into a single consistent 0.25° daily record running from 1978 to near-present — by far the longest satellite soil-moisture time series available anywhere. It is freely downloadable from the CEDA archive with no registration required.

Its length is the point: where SMAP's decade-long record is too short for robust trend or drought-frequency analysis, ESA CCI SM's four-decade span makes that kind of long-term climatological work possible.

Where it fits in the workflow

TerrainCatchmentRainfallRunoffRoutingHydraulicsMappingReporting

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