SMOS-Box

Introduction

The BEAM SMOS-Box project has been brought into life in order to support users of data acquired by ESA's Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS) mission. BEAM and the SMOS-Box are user tools which ESA/ESRIN are providing free of charge to the Earth Observation Community.

The SMOS-Box software has been developed by Brockmann Consult under ESA contract initiated by Steven Delwart (ESTEC) and coordinated Peter Regner (ESRIN).

This document set provides the online help for Version 2.0 of the SMOS-Box.

License

BEAM and the SMOS-Box are free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation. This program is distributed in the hope it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

Supported Data Products

Version 2.0 of the BEAM SMOS-Box is capable of reading SMOS data products complying with Schemas Release 2010-02-12_v04-04-06. The product types supported are listed in the table below.

Type	Level	Description
SMOS Products
MIR_BWLD1C	1C	Browse Land Dual-Polarisation Product. In the BEAM data model all measurements in the `BT_Data_Type` record are represented as bands
MIR_BWLF1C	1C	Browse Land Full-Polarisation Product. In the BEAM data model all measurements in the `BT_Data_Type` record are represented as bands
MIR_BWSD1C	1C	Browse Sea Dual-Polarisation Product. In the BEAM data model all measurements in the `BT_Data_Type` record are represented as bands
MIR_BWSF1C	1C	Browse Sea Full-Polarisation Product. In the BEAM data model all measurements in the `BT_Data_Type` record are represented as bands
MIR_SCLD1C	1C	Science Land Dual-Polarisation Product. In the BEAM data model all measurements in the `BT_Data_Type` record are represented as bands. The user can specify whether the band data should be provided by a simulated browse product, which is computed on-the-fly, or by an individual snapshot. The former is the default. Brightness temperature measurements, pixel radiometric accuracies and Stokes parameters are represented in the Satellite's as well as in the Earth's reference frame
MIR_SCLF1C	1C	Land Full-Polarisation Product. In the BEAM data model all measurements in the `BT_Data_Type` record are represented as bands. The user can specify whether the band data should be provided by a simulated browse product, which is computed on-the-fly, or by an individual snapshot. The former is the default. Brightness temperature measurements, pixel radiometric accuracies and Stokes parameters are represented in the Satellite's as well as in the Earth's reference frame
MIR_SCSD1C	1C	Level-1c Science Sea Dual-Polarisation Product. In the BEAM data model all measurements in the `BT_Data_Type` record are represented as bands. The user can specify whether the band data should be provided by a simulated browse product, which is computed on-the-fly, or by an individual snapshot. The former is the default. Brightness temperature measurements, pixel radiometric accuracies and Stokes parameters are represented in the Satellite's as well as in the Earth's reference frame
MIR_SCSF1C	1C	Level-1c Science Sea Full-Polarisation Product. In the BEAM data model all measurements in the `BT_Data_Type` record are represented as bands. The user can specify whether the band data should be provided by a simulated browse product, which is computed on-the-fly, or by an individual snapshot. The former is the default. Brightness temperature measurements, pixel radiometric accuracies and Stokes parameters are represented in the Satellite's as well as in the Earth's reference frame
MIR_OSUDP2	2	Ocean Salinity User Data Product. In the BEAM data model all measurements in the `Grid_Point_Data_Type` record are represented as bands
MIR_SMUDP2	2	Soil Moisture User Data Product. In the BEAM data model all measurements in the `Grid_Point_Data_Type` record are represented as bands
Auxiliary Products
AUX_DFFLAI		Leaf area index (LAI) auxiliary product. In the BEAM data model all measurements in the `DFFG_LAI_Point_Data_Type` record are represented as bands
AUX_ECMWF_		ECMWF auxiliary product. In the BEAM data model selected measurements in the `ECMWF_PARAMS_Data_Type` record are represented as bands
AUX_LSMASK		Land/sea mask auxiliary product. All flags in the land/sea mask are represented as masks in BEAM
AUX_VTEC_C		Consolidated Vertical Total Electron Content auxiliary product. In the BEAM data model all measurements in the `VTEC_Data_Type` record are represented as bands
AUX_VTEC_P		Predicted Vertical Total Electron Content auxiliary product. In the BEAM data model all measurements in the `VTEC_Data_Type` record are represented as bands

Tools and commands

Version 2.0 of the SMOS-Box includes five SMOS-specific tools and commands:

Grid point data table: all measurements made for the grid point selected by either the mouse pointer or a selected pin are displayed in a table.
Grid point flag matrix diagram: all flags associated with the measurements made for the grid point selected by either the mouse pointer or a selected pin are displayed in a flag matrix
Grid point brightness temperature chart: All brightness temperatures measured for the grid point selected by either the mouse pointer or a selected pin are displayed in a chart
Snapshot information tool: information for all snapshots contained in a Level-1c Science product can be browsed with a slider
Grid point export command: exports all data for a user-defined set of SMOS grid points into a plain text file

Known Limitations

Version 2.0 of the SMOS-Box has the following known limitations:

All SMOS data products are represented as global products covering the whole surface of the Earth. Therefore SMOS products do not have a geographical boundary
Due to the representation of SMOS products as global products, it is not possible to draw lines or shapes crossing the anti-meridian
Statistics, scatter plots, histograms and profile plots use image pixel data rather than SMOS grid point data

Further Information

The most important source of information for BEAM and the SMOS-Box are the BEAM Forum and the SMOS-Box Wiki.

Reporting Issues

You can submit BEAM bug reports or feature request to the SMOS-Box Issue Tracker.