H-SAF (Satellite Application Facility on Support to Operational Hydrology and Water Management) is one of the eight EUMETSAT SAF services and serves to deliver products related to hydrological and water management applications. In the context of H-SAF, precipitation, soil moisture and snow parameters are produced daily on a 25x25 km spatial resolution grid.
One of the soil moisture (sm) products that are routinely made available in the context of H-SAF is the “SM-DAS2-H14” that assesses root zone soil moisture index in the root zone. SM-DAS2-H14 is produced by assimilating soil moisture content estimates based on the ASCAT radar scatterometer in the ECMWF Land Data Assimilation System. The SM-DAS2-H14 product is available in 4 vertical layers:
Layer 1: 0-7 cm
Layer 2: 7-28 cm
Layer 3: 28-100 cm
Layer 4: 100-289 cm
H-SAF products can be viewed and downloaded here.
The SM-DAS2-H14 product for 23/10/2020 is available below for all 4 layers. The region of southern Africa (SAF) is indicated in the red box. In the 1st layer (0-7 cm) high sm conditions are observed over the northern part of SAF and very low sm values are observed over the central and SW part of SAF. Soil moisture in this layer displays an almost concurrent response to precipitation. A rather similar sm spatial pattern is observed for layers 2 and 3, with sm values decreasing as the soil depth increases. Layer 4, however, displays an increase in sm values throughout the whole of SAF with the wet regions at the northern part extending towards the center of SAF.
