Retrieving Soil Moisture and temperature using SMOS observations at a test site in the Yamal Peninsular

In this paper, the results of radiothermal remote sensing of soil moisture and temperature is presented for a test site located in Arctic tundra on the Yamal Peninsula, the Russia Federation using full-polarimetry multi-angular brightness temperature (BT) observations at the frequency of 1.4 GHz. The BT data were obtained from the Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS) satellite with the SMOS footprint near the polar weather station Marresale, Yamal Peninsular, the Russia Federation. The SMOS data covered the period of on the ground observations conducted in August, 2015. The method to retrieve soil moisture and temperature is based on solving an inverse problem by minimizing the norm of the residuals between the observed and predicted values of BTs. The calculation of BT was performed using semi-empirical model of radiothermal emission and temperature-dependent dielectric model for an organic-rich tundra soil. The obtained results revealed the applicability of the SMOS data for simultaneous retrieving the soil moisture and temperature for the Arctic tundra environment.