SMOS soil moisture product evaluation over West-Africa from local to regional scale

This paper assessed the SMOS soil moisture values from Level 3 (SMOS L3SM) product provided by the French CNES-CATDS. The evaluation was conducted at the local scale through comparison with ground-based soil moisture measurements acquired in Mali, Niger and Benin from 2010 to 2012. The SMOS L3SM product was compared to three other satellite-based soil moisture products. It was found that, in average over the three sites, the SMOS L3SM product provided the best coefficients of correlation and the lowest root mean square errors (RMSE). The second part of the paper is devoted to retrieve soil moisture estimates between successive SMOS soil moisture measurements in order to increase the temporal resolution. The result of the methodology allows obtaining 3-hour soil moisture mapping over West Africa with a coefficient of correlation greater than 0.82, and an RMSE lower than 0.030m3m−3 in Niger and Mali and lower than 0.044m3m−3 in Benin. •SMOS soil moisture product evaluation in West Africa•Comparison with local in-situ soil moisture measurements•Comparison with three other satellite-based soil moisture product•Method to retrieve soil moisture estimates between successive SMOS measurements