Two-year global simulation of L-band brightness temperatures over land

This letter presents a synthetic L-band (1.4 GHz) multiangular brightness temperature dataset over land surfaces that was simulated at a half-degree resolution and at the global scale. The microwave emission of various land-covers (herbaceous and woody vegetation, frozen and unfrozen bare soil, snow, etc.) was computed using a simple model [L-band Microwave Emission of the Biosphere (L-MEB)] based on radiative transfer equations. The soil and vegetation characteristics needed to initialize the L-MEB model were derived from existing land-cover maps. Continuous simulations from a land-surface scheme for 1987 and 1988 provided time series of the main variables driving the L-MEB model: soil temperature at the surface and at depth, surface soil moisture, proportion of frozen surface soil moisture, and snow cover characteristics. The obtained global maps constitute a useful dataset for a first evaluation of the sensitivity of future satellite-based L-band radiometry data to soil moisture.