This project has received funding from the European Union’s Seventh Programme for

research, technological development and demonstration under grant agreement No. 603608

DG Research –FP7-ENV-2013-two-stage

Global Earth Observation

for integrated water resource assessment

Earth Observation Dataset Inventory

Deliverable No: D.3.1 – EO Dataset inventory

Ref.: WP3 - Task 1

Date: May 2014

WP3 - Task 1 – D.3.1 EO Dataset Inventory

Deliverable Title D.3.1 – EO Dataset Inventory

Filename E2O_D3.1_Data_Inventory_v02.docx01

Authors Wouter Dorigo (TU Wien)

Vincenzo Levizzani (ISAC-CNR)

Contributors Filipe Aires (Estellus)

Elsa Cattani (CNR-ISAC)

Chantal Claud (CNRS-LMD)

Richard de Jeu (VU Amsterdam)

Steve Groom (PMLA)

Marketa Jindrova (GISAT)

Sante Laviola (CNR-ISAC)

Frank S. Marzano (SUR)

Inge Melotte (I-MAGE)

Gonzalo Miguez Macho (USC)

Giulia Panegrossi (CNR-ISAC)

Rogier Westerhoff (Deltares)

Hessel Winsemius (Deltares)

Date 30/05/2014

Prepared under contract from the European Commission

Grant Agreement No. 603608

Directorate-General for Research & Innovation (DG Research), Collaborative project, FP7-ENV-2013-

two-stage

Start of the project: 01/01/2014

Duration: 48 months

Project coordinator: Stichting Deltares, NL

Dissemination level

X PU Public

PP Restricted to other programme participants (including the Commission

Services)

RE Restricted to a group specified by the consortium (including the Commission

Services)

CO Confidential, only for members of the consortium (including the Commission

Services)

Deliverable status version control

Version Date Author

0.1 21/05/2014 Wouter Dorigo (TU Wien)

0.2 22/05/2014 Vincenzo Levizzani (CNR-ISAC)

0.3 30/05/2014 Wouter Dorigo (TU Wien)

WP3 - Task 1 – D.3.1 EO Dataset Inventory

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Table of Contents

1 Executive Summary ................................................................................................................................ 1

2 Introduction.............................................................................................................................................. 2

3 Data set inventory ................................................................................................................................... 3

3.1 Introduction .................................................................................................................................... 3

3.2 Precipitation ................................................................................................................................... 3

3.3 Soil Moisture .................................................................................................................................. 9

3.4 Evaporation ................................................................................................................................. 10

3.5 Surface water .............................................................................................................................. 11

3.6 Ground water ............................................................................................................................... 13

3.7 Snow............................................................................................................................................ 14

3.8 Water quality ................................................................................................................................ 15

4 Temporal coverage ............................................................................................................................... 16

5 Improvements foreseen within the project ............................................................................................. 17

5.1 Precipitation ................................................................................................................................. 17

5.2 Soil moisture ................................................................................................................................ 17

5.3 Evaporation ................................................................................................................................. 17

5.4 Surface water .............................................................................................................................. 17

5.5 Groundwater ................................................................................................................................ 18

5.6 Snow............................................................................................................................................ 18

5.7 Water quality ................................................................................................................................ 18

6 Glossary ................................................................................................................................................ 19

WP3 - Task 1 – D.3.1 EO Dataset Inventory

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List of Figure

Figure 1 Temporal availability of water cycle products ................................................................. 16

List of Tables

Table 1 Overview of baseline precipitation products ....................................................................... 4

Table 2 Overview of baseline surface soil moisture product ......................................................... 9

Table 3 Overview of baseline evaporation products ....................................................................... 10

Table 4 Overview of baseline surface water products .................................................................... 11

Table 5 Overview of baseline ground water product ...................................................................... 13

Table 6 Overview of baseline snow products ..................................................................................... 14

Table 7 Overview of baseline water quality product ....................................................................... 15

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1 Executive Summary

D3.1 “Earth Observation Data Inventory” as output of Task 3.1, provides a detailed

inventory of the existing state-of-the-art datasets with provision of their

characteristics and product information. This will be the baseline against which new

products and product improvements developed within Work Package 3 will be

evaluated.

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2 Introduction

Earth Observation (EO) datasets for a variety of different variables are available in an

organized form since the 1970s. Data products and time series are now available for

almost all components of the terrestrial water cycle. Within eartH2Observe existing

datasets will be tested and new data sources will be made available to the project

together with error analysis. New algorithms will also be introduced for limited

regions and case studies to improve the resolution and the reliability of monitoring

techniques of regional and global water resources.

WP3 “Earth Observations - Combining and improving EO processing techniques”

focuses on the improvement of existing water cycle datasets and on the combination

of multiple variable of the same variables in a synergetic way. Synergistic data

products are expected to lower the uncertainty with respect to the best retrieval from

a single observation type and, therefore, facilitate the development of continuous

long-term time series exceeding the coverage of individual satellite missions. WP3 will

closely interact with WP4 and WP5 for investigating the validity of the proposed

datasets and their effective use in hydrological and water cycle models. Provision of

data to the case studies of WP6 will pay particular attention to use the appropriate

types of datasets depending on the case study location as not all datasets are suitable

for use everywhere (e.g., tropics vs mid-latitudes).

The datasets and algorithms will be evaluated in terms of their contribution to

assessing each individual element of the terrestrial water cycle in close connection

with performance metrics defined in WP2. The deliverables in this work package will

be embedded in WP4 to evaluate their error characteristics and uncertainty

propagation in modeling water cycle parameters, which is a fundamental building

block for developing an optimal integration of data with models in the final global

reanalysis of WP5.

The following satellite and sensors will be used: GRACE, Cryosat-2, SMOS, ASCAT,

EUMETSAT Polar System, Envisat ASAR Full Mission Archive, Envisat MERIS full

resolution archive, ERS-1/2 Full Mission Archive, Sentinel-1 NRT data (if ready),

COSMO-SkyMed X-SAR, TerraSAR-X and Tandem-X, Meteosat SEVIRI, MODIS Full

Mission Archive, LandsatTM, GPM (launched in early 2014), TRMM, Megha-Tropiques,

AMSU-A/B, AMSR-E, AMSR-2, SSMIS, ATMS, MetOp-B, AVHRR, Topex/Poseidon, Jason-

1 and 2, VIIRS, AATSR and Sentinel-1 (launched on April 3, 2014), -2, -3 satellites (if

available). Non-European satellite products will be included in the project especially

in those cases where they improve the overall quality and accuracy of the end-

products by contributing to the continuously evolving observing constellation.

D3.1, as output of Task 3.1, provides an inventory of the existing state-of-the-art

datasets with provision of their characteristics and product information. This will be

the baseline against which new products and product improvements will be evaluated.

WP3 - Task 1 – D.3.1 EO Dataset Inventory

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3 Data set inventory

3.1 Introduction

For each of the baseline products the following details are summarised below

• Dataset Name

• Variable(s)

• Agency Producer

• Processing Version

• Satellites

• Sensors

• Period

• Short description

• Time resolution

• Spatial resolution

• Spatial sampling

• Spatial coverage (global or lat-lon box)

• Error estimates provided

• Flags provided

• Issues, limitations,

• Uncertainty

• Subset or full set provided to project

• Creator

• Data responsibility within E2O

• Data Licensing

• Data Type

• Data format

• Foreseen improvements within E2O

• Remarks

3.2 Precipitation

Various aspects of precipitation will be covered in the project, including precipitation

rate, occurrence of occurrence of precipitation/deep convection, and accumulated

precipitation . Extensive rainfall global datasets are available from infrared and

microwave passive sensors as well as from the Precipitation Radar onboard the

Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM).

WP3 - Task 1 – D.3.1 EO Dataset Inventory

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Table 1 Overview of baseline precipitation products

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Table1 (cont.) Overview of baseline precipitation products

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Table1 (cont.) Overview of baseline precipitation products

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Table1 (cont.) Overview of baseline precipitation products

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Table1 (cont.) Overview of baseline precipitation products

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3.3 Soil Moisture

Table 2 Overview of baseline surface soil moisture product

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3.4 Evaporation

Table 3 Overview of baseline evaporation products

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3.5 Surface water

Surface water products include Inundation extent and dynamics, Surface water climatology, and Lake water level (Table 4).

Table 4 Overview of baseline surface water products

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Table 4 (cont.) Overview of baseline surface water products

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3.6 Ground water

Table 5 Overview of baseline ground water product

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3.7 Snow

Table 6 Overview of baseline snow products

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3.8 Water quality

Table 7 Overview of baseline water quality product

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4 Temporal coverage

Figure 1 shows the temporal availability of the various water cycle products described in the previous section. Notice, that several precipitation

datasets will be only released in autumn 2014. The timeline shows that a full coverage among all products is only obtained from 2003 onwards

which is related to the launch of central missions like TRMM (1997) and Envisat (2002).

Figure 1 Temporal availability of water cycle products

Variable Product 1978 1979 1980 1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014

Evapotranspiration GLEAM in production

Evapotranspiration MOD16

Soil Moisture ECV_SM (CCI) in production

Inundation Extent and

DynamicsGIEMS

in production

Surface waterASAR-GM

climatology

Lake water level Lake water level

Water Quality MERIS FR

Precipitation 3B42 in production in production

Precipitation CMORPH in production

Precipitation GSMaP in production

Precipitation PERSIANN in production

Precipitation CDRD

Precipitation PNPR

Precipitation 183-WSL

Snowfall 183-WSLSF

Precipitation TAMSAT

Precipitation RFEv2.0 in production

Precipitation PREC_X-SAR in production

Precip/ conv occurr. PRECIP/MR/DC in production

Available data

Data in production

Legend

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5 Improvements foreseen within the project

5.1 Precipitation

New datasets will dwell on the sensors of the Global Precipitation Measurement

(GPM) mission, which was launched in February 2014: the GPM Microwave Imager

(GMI) and the Dual frequency Precipitation Radar (DPR) (Task 3.2.a).

A prototype algorithm for snowfall retrievals will also be introduced in the effort to

contribute to fill the gap of the solid precipitation component of EO precipitation

datasets (Task 3.2.f).

The exploitation of synthetic aperture radars (SAR) instruments onboard COSMO-

SkyMed, X-SAR and TerraSAR-X missions will enhance the precipitation detection

capabilities of more conventional sensors in a synergetic approach (3.2.a).

The project will explore the use of high-resolution NWP simulations for correcting

biases in merged satellite precipitation products associated with heavy precipitation

events over mountainous terrain (Task 3.2.a).

In addition, the use of land surface wetness conditions from land-data assimilation

systems (WP5) as a conditioning term in error modeling of passive microwave

satellite rainfall retrievals will be explored (Task 3.2.a).

5.2 Soil moisture

The datasets of the European Space Agency (ESA) Climate Change Initiative (CCI) will

be made available and enhanced with data from the Advanced Microwave Scanning

Radiometer-2 (AMSR-2) instrument onboard Japan's Global Change Observation

Mission-Water (GCOM-W1) satellite and from Metop-B of the European Organization

for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (EUMETSAT). A novel error

propagation scheme will be devised for product combination and spatio-temporal

resampling (Task 3.2.b).

5.3 Evaporation

The GLEAM (Global Land-surface Evaporation: the Amsterdam Methodology) 25+ year

daily global evaporation time series based on EO data represents the state-of-the-art

dataset and will be improved and temporally extended. In the Oceania case study the

MODIS MOD16 dataset will be evaluated. MOD16 gives 8-daily, monthly and yearly

actual evapotranspiration for the period 2000-2012 in a 1x1km2 resolution (Task

3.2.c).

5.4 Surface water

Improvements with respect to the beaseline will include (Task 3.2.d):

• Surface water levels. Long term fluctuations of surface water levels in

lakes/reservoirs from altimeter data (ENVISAT-ASAR, ERS, GEOSAT,

Topex/Poseidon, Jason-1/2).

• Retrieval of wetlands. Use of the Global Inundation Extent from Multi-Satellite

(GIEMS) for mapping the dynamics of wetlands at the global scale.

• River discharge. Build an archive of river discharge for a few selected large river

basins with AMSR-E/TRMM EO data in combination with the Global Runoff Data

Centre (GRDC) while at the same time investigating the improvement by adding

data from satellite altimetry.

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• Climatology of surface water. Compile a 10+ year SAR-based time series.

• Improvement using global digital elevation models (DEM) to derive changes in

daily global surface water volume.

• Provision of maps for merging/reanalysis with MODerate resolution Imaging

Spectroradiometer (MODIS) flood maps from the Dartmouth Flood Observatory

and suggestions for improvement of monitoring capabilities using data from

ESA Copernicus Sentinel-1 satellite.

5.5 Groundwater

• Improve the Equilibrium Water Table (EWT) dataset, currently consisting of

Global Land Data Assimilation System (GLDAS) products, satellite derived

topography and the soil map from the United Nations Food and Agriculture

Organization (UN-FAO). This will be done for regional cases in Spain and New

Zealand expecting improvements in equilibrium depth, time varying versions

and a better estimation of recharge, by using regional information and medium

resolution satellite datasets (e.g., MODIS MOD16 Actual Evapotranspiration).

• Preparation for validation with data from ESA's Gravity Recovery and Climate

Experiment (GRACE) to be done in WP4 (Task 3.2.e).

5.6 Snow

• Improvement of satellite snowfall retrieval using AMSU-B, CloudSat, and GPM

platforms (Task 3.2.f).

• Snow extent (SE) and Snow Water Equivalent (SWE): optimization and

construction of multi-satellite products using combinations of SAR and optical

data (Task 3.2.f).

• Use of existing services Globsnow, IMS, and CryoLand, as well as satellite data

from MSG SEVIRI (and future MTG), METOP, AATSR, Terra/Aqua MODIS

followed by VIIRS, future Sentinels, SMMR, SSM/I, and AMSR-E. This analysis

will deal both with the different spatial resolution of EO and ground data and

with the integration procedure (Task 3.2.f).

5.7 Water quality

• Improvement of lake water quality retrieval algorithms focused on high colored

dissolved organic matter lakes in Estonia (Task 3.2.g).

• Suggestions for improvement of current monitoring techniques and use of

Sentinel-2 Multi-Spectral Instrument (MSI) and Sentinel-3 Ocean and Land

Colour Instrument (OLCI) (Task 3.2.g).

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6 Glossary

AATSR Advanced Along-Track Scanning Radiometer

AMSR-E Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer for EOS

AMSR-2 Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer-2

AMSU-A/B Advanced Microwave Sounding Unit-A/B

ASAR Advanced Synthetic Aperture Radar

ASCAT Advanced SCATterometer

ATMS Advanced Technology Microwave Sounder

AVHRR Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer

CCI Climate Change Initiative

DEM Digital Elevation Model

DPR Dual frequency Precipitation Radar

EO Earth Observation

ERS European Remote Sensing satellite

ESA European Space Agency

EUMETSAT European Organization for the Exploitation of Meteorological

Satellites

EWT Equilibrium Water Table

GCOM-W1 Global Change Observation Mission-Water

GIEMS Global Inundation Extent from Multi-Satellite

GLDAS Global Land Data Assimilation System

GLEAM Global Land-surface Evaporation: the Amsterdam Methodology

GMI GPM Microwave Imager

GPM Global Precipitation Measurement mission

GRACE Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment

GRDC Global Runoff Data Centre

IMS Interactive Multisensor Snow and Ice Mapping System

MERIS MEdium Resolution Imaging Spectrometer

MetOp Meteorological Operation satellite

MODIS MODerate resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer

MSG Meteosat Second Generation

MSI Multi-Spectral Instrument

MTG Meteosat Third Generation

NRT Near-Real Time

NWP Numerical Weather Prediction

OLCI Ocean and Land Colour Instrument

SAR Synthetic Aperture Radar

SE Snow Extent

SEVIRI Spinning Enhanced Visible and InfraRed Imager

SMMR Scanning Multichannel Microwave Radiometer

SMOS Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity mission

SSM/I Special Sensor Microwave/Imager

SSMIS Special Sensor Microwave Imager/Sounder

SWE Snow Water Equivalent

TRMM Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission

UN-FAO United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization

VIIRS Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite