[Translate to English:] Logo of the DWC project

HydroTerra, a geosynchronous C-band radar satellite designed for monitoring the daily water cycle, was recently selected by ESA as one of its three Earth Explorer 10 candidate missions. To contribute to Phase 0 of this mission, the goal of the DWC-Radar project is to exploit the availability of five contemporary European C-band radar instruments in space to develop sub-daily backscatter time series and retrieve soil moisture at 1km resolution.

The main benefits of the availability of sub-daily soil moisture time series will be demonstrated in downstream products by improving rainfall retrievals from soil moisture using SM2RAIN and in three applications that are of ultimate importance to civil security: the estimation of irrigation water use, flood forecasting, and landslide risk prediction. The outputs of soil moisture and rainfall will be validated with in situ and model data.

Funding

FFG (Austrian Research Promotion Agency), opens an external URL in a new window

Project duration

November 2019 – June 2021

Partners

CNR-IRPI (IT), opens an external URL in a new window
Earth Observation Data Centre (AT), opens an external URL in a new window 

CLIMERS role

Validation of soil moisture products
Estimation of irrigation water volumes

CLIMERS involved

Wouter Dorigo
Stefan Schlaffer
Luca Zappa

Project URL

https://projekte.ffg.at/projekt/3310028, opens an external URL in a new window