Soil Moisture Retrievals Based on Active and Passive Microwave Data: State-of-the-Art and Operational Applications

This chapter provides a description of current operational applications using state-of-the-art soil moisture retrievals from active and passive remote sensing data. Both types of observations have demonstrated to contain useful information of shallow land variables. In particular, this chapter focuses on how soil moisture retrievals are used at the operational level to derive flood, drought, and landslides warnings, as well as its use in coupled land-atmospheric models. An overview of the caveats in the production and applications of the retrievals is also provided. The chapter ends by providing perspectives of these novel applications.