Retrieving soil moisture over bare soil from ERS wind scatterometer data

The ERS-1/2 wind scatterometer (WSC) has a resolution cell of about 50 km but provides a high repetition rate (less than four days) and makes measurements at multiple incidence angles. In order to estimate effective surface reflectivity (related to soil moisture content) over bare soil using this instrument, an original methodology based on the integral equation model (IEM) is presented that takes advantage of multiple view angular observations which means two independent observations at the same resolution cell and same time. The possibility of applying the inversion procedure to retrieve soil moisture is investigated using a set of data collected from the Intensive Observation Period (IOP ´98) field campaign in 1998 of the Global Energy and Water Experiment (GEWEX) Asian Monsoon Experiment Tibet (GAME/Tibet). The retrieved values obtained for the bare surface are consistent with ground measurements collected in these areas