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Dataset

 

EOCIS: Soil Moisture Africa, v2.3.1

Update Frequency: Not Planned
Latest Data Update: 2025-06-18
Status: Ongoing
Online Status: ONLINE
Publication State: Citable
Publication Date: 2025-06-17
DOI Publication Date: 2025-06-17
Download Stats: last 12 months
Dataset Size: 15.5K Files | 28GB

Abstract

This dataset contains Africa-wide soil moisture and related water balance variables produced within the Earth Observation Climate Information Service (EOCIS) project.

The product is derived using the JULES land surface model, forced with TAMSAT satellite rainfall estimates and other meteorological variables from the NCEP reanalysis, and tuned to NASA SMAP satellite soil moisture observations. Data are provided at the daily scale, from 1983-01-01 to present (latency around 7 days) at 0.25 degrees by 0.25 degrees spatial resolution.

For further details, please visit the TAMSAT website (https://www.tamsat.org.uk).

Citable as:  University of Reading; Maidment, R.; Quaife, T.; Pinnington, E.; Black, E.; Ejigu, A.; Kumar, D.; Thomas, S. (2025): EOCIS: Soil Moisture Africa, v2.3.1. NERC EDS Centre for Environmental Data Analysis, 17 June 2025. doi:10.5285/083f0a37e058495eaef542263198019f. https://dx.doi.org/10.5285/083f0a37e058495eaef542263198019f

Abbreviation: Not defined
Keywords: Soil Moisture, Drought, Africa, EOCIS, Climate, TAMSAT

Details

Previous Info:
No news update for this record
Previously used record identifiers:
No related previous identifiers.
Access rules:
Public data: access to these data is available to both registered and non-registered users.
Use of these data is covered by the following licence(s):
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
When using these data you must cite them correctly using the citation given on the CEDA Data Catalogue record.
Data lineage:

This dataset was produced by the TAMSAT Group (University of Reading) in the context of the Earth Observation Climate Information Service (EOCIS) project.

Data Quality:
The soil moisture variables are suitable for both operational and research applications.
File Format:
Files are NetCDF formatted.

Related Documents

 TAMSAT webpage

Process overview

This dataset was generated by the computation detailed below.
Title

EOCIS: Soil Moisture Africa, v2.3.1

Abstract

Soil moisture and related variables were derived using the JULES land surface model forced by TAMSAT v3.1 satellite rainfall estimates and NCEP meteorological variables. JULES soil hydraulic parameters were calibrated using SMAP satellite soil moisture observations.

Input Description

None

Output Description

None

Software Reference

None

  • units: kg m-2 s-1
  • var_id: fao_et0
  • long_name: FAO Penman-Monteith evapotranspiration for reference crop
  • units: kg m-2
  • var_id: smc_avail_top
  • long_name: Gridbox available moisture in top 1.000000m of soil
  • units: kg m-2
  • var_id: smcl
  • long_name: Gridbox moisture content of each soil layer
  • units: kg m-2 s-1
  • var_id: fqw_gb
  • long_name: Gridbox moisture flux from surface
  • units: kg m-2 s-1
  • var_id: precip
  • long_name: Gridbox precipitation rate
  • units: kg m-2 s-1
  • var_id: runoff
  • long_name: Gridbox runoff rate
  • units: 1
  • var_id: fsmc_gb
  • long_name: Gridbox soil moisture availability factor (beta)
  • units: 1
  • var_id: fsmc
  • long_name: PFT soil moisture availability factor (beta)
  • long_name: time
  • var_id: time
  • units: days

Co-ordinate Variables

  • units: degrees_north
  • standard_name: latitude
  • long_name: latitude
  • var_id: lat
  • units: degrees_east
  • standard_name: longitude
  • long_name: longitude
  • var_id: lon
Coverage
Temporal Range
Start time:
1983-01-01T00:00:00
End time:
Ongoing
Geographic Extent

 
37.3750°
 
-17.8750°
 
51.3750°
 
-35.3750°