PLEASE NOTE: This data set should be acknowledged: Peischl, S., Walker, J. P., Rüdiger, C., Ye, N., Kerr, Y. H., Kim, E., Bandara, R., and Allahmoradi, M.: The AACES field experiments: SMOS calibration and validation across the Murrumbidgee River catchment, Hydrology and Earth System Sciences, 16, 1697-1708, doi:10.5194/hess-16-1697-2012, 2012.

Experiment Overview

By the end of the commissioning phase of SMOS a decision was made by ESA to continue measurements in full polarisation mode only, with sky calibrations conducted fortnightly. A validation of the satellite performance in operational mode was required for the initial part of the operational phase, for a range of diverse soil moisture and land cover characteristics. The AACES-2 campaign was able to meet these requirements, because of its location in the southern hemisphere and that the campaign was designed to cover a large transect with significant variability in conditions. The second AACES field experiment focused on the central half of the 100km × 500km (initially more than 20 independent SMOS pixels) transect of the Murrumbidgee River catchment previously covered during AACES-1 at 1 km resolution using an L-band radiometer, with flights timed to coincide with SMOS overpasses. The primary airborne instruments included the Polarimetric L-band Multibeam Radiometer (PLMR), thermal infrared and multi-spectral sensors, supported by surface soil moisture content, soil temperature and rainfall data from the Murrumbidgee (OzNet) monitoring network. This was further complemented by short-term soil moisture and temperature monitoring stations with supplementary rainfall, leaf wetness, and thermal infrared measurements. In addition, intensive near-surface soil moisture sampling using the Hydraprobe Data Acquisition System (HDAS) and extensive vegetation characterisation were conducted at a number of focus farms.

Murrumbidgee Catchment

Source: GoogleEarth, accessed on 28th, Apr. 2010 (modified)

An overview of the AACES-2 campaign is provided in a KML file that can be opened by Google Earth software. All data collected during the AACES-2 campaign can be downloaded via the Download Centre.

AACES-2 field campaign schedule