The important role of soil moisture for the environment and climate system is well known. Soil moisture influences hydrological and agricultural processes, runoff generation, drought development and many other processes. It also impacts on the climate system through atmospheric feedback. Soil moisture is a source of water for evapotranspiration over the continents, and is involved in both the water and the energy cycles. Soil moisture was recognized as an Essential Climate Variable (ECV) in 2010.

Animation of the ESA CCI v07.1 monthly soil moisture anomalies for the year 2021

The Soil Moisture_cci project is part of the ESA Programme on Global Monitoring of Essential Climate Variables (ECV), better known as the Climate Change Initiative (CCI), initiated in 2010 and producing an updated soil moisture product every year. The ESA CCI Soil Moisture product has contributed to hundreds of hydrological and climatological studies worldwide, as well as the annual BAMS "State of the Climate" reports.

The CCI Soil Moisture project produces:

ESA CCI soil moisture v07.1 product utilizes 5 active and 12 passive microwave sensors.

The dataset ingests soil moisture datasets derived from the sensors listed in the figure above. In particular, the following datasets are used (at ESA CCI SM v07.1):