News

Dear SSM product user,
the Metop-A satellite, launched on 19 October 2006, has massively exceeded its design lifetime of five years. However, it is now time for it to retire and this action is planned for November 2021. As a result Metop-A ASCAT SSM products (H101, H102) will be discontinued. The planned end date for the Metop-A ASCAT SSM products is 15th November 2021.
We will continue to provide ASCAT SSM from Metop-B and Metop-C. More detailed information can be found on https://www.eumetsat.int/plans-metop-end-life.

Due to the permanent failure of MHS channel2 on METOP-A (EUMETSAT UNS nr. 5682 - MHS instrument: Channel 2 has been declared as failed due to the very high level of NEDT (noise).), H02B product are not based on METOP-A anymore since 26/02/2020

We are pleased to announce the 5th H SAF User Workshop supported by EUMeTrain. It will be held in online mode from January 24th, 2022 to January 28th,2022.Hydrology SAF is the satellite application facility of the EUMETSAT distributed ground segment that has the aim to provide satellite derived products related to precipitation, soil moisture and snow over land in support to hydrology and water management. In addition to satellite derived products provision H SAF provides both continuous quality assessment of products and evaluation of their hydrological impact for the benefit of the end user communities.The workshop objectives will be:

• Review of the H SAF products status and their evolution in view of the opportunities and challenges of the future European satellite missions;
• Drought monitoring and water resources management;
• H SAF products quality assessment and applications;
• Integrated approach between H SAF products and risk management;
• H SAF products use cases over African region.

Further information about the workshop programme and the registration procedure will be provided on a dedicated webpage

The H SAF snow products H34 (Snow detection by VIS/NIR of SEVIRI) and H35 (Snow detection and Effective snow cover by VIS/NIR of AVHRR) are now released in pre-operational status.

Dear users, from the 7th June 2021, products H01 (Precipitation rate at ground by MW conical scanners) and H02B (Precipitation rate at ground by MW cross-track scanners) will be disseminated only in NETCDF format. The dissemination of the BUFR format will be interrupted.

The H SAF is pleased to announce the Full dissemination for the following “Pre-Operational” Near-Real-Time products which is planned to start on 20/05/2021.

• (H34) Snow detection (snow mask) by VIS/NIR of SEVIRI, provides a binary map of snow / no-snow situation based on the acquisition of VIS/IR images from GEO;
• (H35) Snow detection (snow mask) and Effective snow cover by VIS/NIR of AVHRR, estimate of the fractional cover at resolution element level using the combined effect of fractional snow cover and other reflective contributors;

The main difference from the currently distributed H SAF “Operational” snow products (H10 and H12) is essentially that H10 and H12 cover only the Pan-European region.

The offline extension of the latest ASCAT SSM Data Record - Metop ASCAT Surface Soil Moisture Climate Data Record v5 Extension 12.5 km sampling (ASCAT SSM CDR v5 EXT 12.5 km, H116) - has been updated and covers the period 2019-01-01 until 2020-12-31

The EUMETCast Trial dissemination in NetCDF format of product H02B (Precipitation rate at ground by MW cross-track scanners) will start on the 18th February 2021. This product supplies the map of the instantaneous precipitation (mm/hr) generated from MW cross-track scanning radiometers in sun synchronous orbit. Currently processing data from AMSU-A/MHS on board European MetOp and U.S. NOAA satellites.The parallel dissemination of the BUFR format will be guaranteed until the 19th of April

The EUMETCast Trial dissemination in NetCDF format of product H01 (Precipitation rate at ground by MW conical scanners) will start on the 18th February 2021. This products supplies the map of the instantaneous precipitation (mm/hr) generated from MW conical scanning radiometers in sun synchronous orbit.The parallel dissemination of the BUFR format will be guaranteed until the 19th of April.

Due to a technical issue affecting the operative chains of products: H02B, H03B and H05; the generation of these products has undergone some outages or missing files. We are going to fix the issue. We are sorry for the inconvenient

Dear users, we inform you that, the offline product H116 ASCAT SSM CDR v5 EXT 12.5 km has been updated and it now covers the period 2019-01-01 until 2020-11-30

From 14 to 18 December, 2020 EuMeTrain in collaboration with H SAF will organize an event week on precipitation. Precipitation is the most important variable in Earth's hydrological budget, being the major component of the water cycle.The event week will be held using the Webex software and it will be open to everyone. The participants will only have to register themselves, so that they receive the links to access the sessions. The agenda and the registrations will become available in the coming weeks. You can find more details about this event at the following web page: http://eumetrain.org/

Dear users, we inform you that, the offline product H116 ASCAT SSM CDR v5 EXT 12.5 km has been updated and it now covers the period 2019-01-01 until 2020-08-31

Dear users, we inform you that, due to important maintanance of the H SAF system sheduled on the 17th and 18th September, the H SAF services could not be available. We apologize for any inconvenience this might cause.

The Trial dissemination of the Metop-C ASCAT Soil Moisture Demonstrational products, H104 (Metop-C ASCAT Soil Moisture at 12.5 km Swath Grid) and H105 (Metop-C ASCAT Soil Moisture at 25 km Swath Grid) from H SAF started on the 09/09/2020.

The Precipitation product H18 (P-IN-ATMS) has been released and it will be now available on EUMETCast. The H SAF H18 product (P-IN-ATMS) is the Precipitation Rate at Ground by MW cross-track scanners version 3. This product represents an evolution, for ATMS applications, of the previous H02B algorithm and it is based on Artificial Neural Network (ANN) approach for precipitation rate estimation using AMSU/MHS observations over the MSG full disk area (60S-75N, 60W-60E).

The Soil Moisture products H141 and H142 are now available again on the H SAF ftp. A post processing error has been corrected and users are advised to download the current version of the products. We apologise for the inconvenience

Dear users, due to a post processing error on Soil-Moisture products H141 and H142, these products will not be available on the H SAF FTP. The corrected data records will be uploaded and available again by the 31st of July. We apologise for the inconvenience

The offline extension of the latest ASCAT SSM Data Record - Metop ASCAT Surface Soil Moisture Climate Data Record v5 Extension 12.5 km sampling (ASCAT SSM CDR v5 EXT 12.5 km, H116) - has been updated and covers the period 2019-01-01 until 2020-06-30.

Dear Users, the documentation related to product H115 ASCAT SSM CDR v5 12.5 km, is available at the following links: PUM, PVR and ATBD

Dear Users, we inform you that today 18th of June from 14.30 to 16.30, due to extraordinary maintenance of HSAF infrastructure, HSAF services may not be available.We apologize for the inconvenience.

Product RZSM-DR-EXT-10 (H142) 'Scatterometer Root Zone Soil Moisture (RZSM) Data Record extension, 10km resolution' has been released for 2019. H142 is the offline extension of H141 using a consistent production algorithm to provide zone soil wetness profile index from ASCAT on Metop-A/B/C at a yearly frequency from 2019-2021. Product is available for downloading through the H SAF ftp server. Due to the current Web page service update, the user documents related to H142 are accessible only through this link: https://confluence.ecmwf.int/display/LDAS/H+SAF

H SAF Metop ASCAT Surface Soil Moisture (SSM) Climate Data Record (CDR) v5 12.5 km sampling product (ASCAT SSM CDR v5 12.5 km, H115) has been released and covers the period from 2007-01-01 until 2018-12-31. An offline extension - Metop ASCAT Surface Soil Moisture Climate Data Record v5 Extension 12.5 km sampling (ASCAT SSM CDR v5 EXT 12.5 km, H116) - is operationally available as well, currently covering the period 2019-01-01 until 2019-12-31. The SSM CDR products and related documentation are available for downloading through the H SAF FTP server.

Product RZSM-DR2019-10km (H141) 'Scatterometer Root Zone Soil Moisture (RZSM) Data Record 10km resolution' has been released. The product is the reprocessed data record of Root Zone Soil Moisture using consistent production algorithm to provide long time series of the root zone soil wetness profile index from ERS/SCAT for 1992-2006 and from ASCAT on Metop-A/B for 2007-2018. Product is available for downloading through the H-SAF ftp server.Due to the current Web page service update, the user documents related to H141 are accesible only through this link: https://confluence.ecmwf.int/display/LDAS/H+SAF

The H02B product from H SAF will be available on EUMETCast from 17 October.The H02B (PR-OBS-2) product, in BUFR format, is an upgrade to the existing H02A product. Like the H02A, it provides precipitation rates at ground by MW cross-track scanners, with the difference that it covers the Full Disc area. H02A be discontinued on the same day (17 October).

EUMeTrain is going to organise an event week on Soil Moisture products of H-SAF from 4th to 8th November 2019. During this week we will focus on topics such as demonstration of H-SAF Soil Moisture products, Flood prediction and Soil Moisture for drought monitoring. The event week will provide an interesting insight of the H-SAF Soil Moisture products from a scientific and application-oriented point of view. The lectures will be broadcasted using the WebEx Training Center platform. Each session will be comprised of 1 or 2 presentations. The duration of a complete session will be around 1 hour. A detailed time schedule along with registration for the event week will become available in October.

Product SM-DAS-DR2018-EXT (H140) 'Scatterometer Root Zone Soil Moisture (RZSM) Data Record 16km resolution' has been released. The product is the extension for the period 2015-2016 of the root-zone soil moisture data record for the period 1992-2014 (product H27 - SM-DAS-3 2017). Product is available for downloading through the H-SAF ftp server.Due to the current Web page service update, the user documents related to H140 are accesible only through this link: https://confluence.ecmwf.int/display/LDAS/H+SAF

We inform you that products H03A 'Precipitation rate at ground by GEO/IR supported by LEO/MW (H SAF area)' and H05A 'Accumulated precipitation at ground by blended MW and IR (H SAF area)' will be discontinued starting from 1st April 2019, being replaced by the full disc version P-IN-SEVIRI (H03B) and P-AC-SEVIRI (H05B)

The H SAF and HEPEX joint workshop on 'Satellite inspired hydrology in an uncertain future' will be held on 25-28 November 2019 at Reading (UK). The workshop is organized by ECMWF and will have the following objectives:

• To review the status of the hydrological variables retrieval algorithms and to prepare future satellites (e.g. METEOSAT Third Generation, METOP SG, SWOT)
• To characterize the hydrological variable accuracy and to discuss requirements and validation metrics
• To review the status of modelling and data assimilation for hydrological and NWP applications and to share new ideas
• To strengthen links between the H SAF and the Risk management, Hydrological and NWP communities to promote a consistent Earth system approach.

All details can be found on the workshop webpage here.

The precipitation products H03A and H05A are discontinued from EUMETCast dissemination starting from 14th March, following the operation of the full disk products P-IN-SEVIRI (H03B) and P-AC-SEVIRI (H05B). See also EUMETCast announcement here

The P-IN-SEVIRI (H03B) and P-AC-SEVIRI (H05B) products from H SAF will be available on EUMETCast from 14 February.
P-IN-SEVIRI product provides the precipitation rate at ground over full-disk in time and space resolution of geostationary MSG satellite. The precipitation estimation is done acquiring data from operational geostationary satellites and "calibrating" them by precipitation measurements from MW images in sun-synchronous orbits.
P-AC-SEVIRI product provides the accumulated precipitation at ground over full-disk in time and space resolution of geostationary MSG satellite. The product is derived by a time integration, climatologically corrected, of P-IN-SEVIRI rain rate data over 3, 6, 12 and 24 hours.

TU Wien processed soil moisture offline product H114 (H114, Metop ASCAT SSM CDR2017-EXT) covering the period from 2018-01-01 until 2018-12-31, is an extension of the H113 Climate Data Record (CDR) product (H113, Metop ASCAT SSM CDR2017). The H114 offline product is based on the same model parameters as the H113 product maintaining consistency between CDR and offline products.

The EUMETCast Trial dissemination of the H03B will start on the 8th January 2019. This product will supply the precipitation rate at ground by GEO/IR supported by LEO/MW and it is derived from precipitation instantaneous precipitation maps generated by IR images over full-disk. The data are acquired from operational geostationary satellites "calibrated" by precipitation measurements from MW images in sun-synchronous orbits

The EUMETCast Trial dissemination of the H05B will start on the 8th January 2019. This product will supply the accumulated precipitation at ground by blended MW and IR and derived from precipitation maps generated by merging MW images over full-disk. The data are acquired from operational sun-synchronous satellites and IR images from geostationary satellites

The EUMETCast Trial dissemination of the H08 in NetCDF format will start on the 8th January 2019. This product supplies the small scale surface soil moisture by radar scatterometer derived from the global product SM-OBS-1 limited to the H-SAF area. The data are acquired are generated from the MetOp scatterometer (ASCAT) and processed shortly after each satellite orbit completion

Soil moisture Product H08 'Small scale surface soil moisture by radar scatterometer' is now available also in NetCDF format. The new format is currently available for downloading via the H-SAF Products Download Centre; it will be soon distributed also via EUMETCast. For more information about the product, see the dedicated description section.

Snow Products H11 'Snow status (dry/wet) by MW radiometry' and H12 'Effective snow cover by VIS/IR radiometry', previously in pre-operational status, have been declared fully operational. The products are in the snow section of H-SAF website and are available for downloading through the H-SAF ftp server; They are also distributed via EUMETCast

With reference to the "International Remote Sensing School for Hydrological Applications" organized in Rome, on 13-16 November 2018, the Agenda of the event and the application form are now available.

Snow products "Snow Cover" (H31) and "EPS Daily Snow Cover" (H32) have been declared operational. The products are generated in cooperation with LSA SAF and are currently available in the snow cover section of LSA SAF website and are available for downloading through the LSA SAF ftp server; they are also distributed via EUMETCast.

The International Remote Sensing School for Hydrological Applications is organized in Rome, on 13-16 November 2018, in the framework of the H SAF project by the Italian Civil Protection Department in close collaboration with the Italian Air Force Meteorological Service Department. The key objective of this training is to instruct active and future users from Meteo-Hydrological Institutes and/or from research and operational environments in the application of the satellite-based soil moisture products generated by H SAF. The training course will be structured in theoretical lessons on the H SAF products, exercise and discussion sessions on a proper utilization of the H SAF products in an operational environment. For further details see the announcement.

5th Soil Moisture Workshop, 24-25 October 2018 at George Mason University, Fairfax Campus (Washington DC area) USA This Soil Moisture Workshop series focuses on technical advances in the development, validation and application of global integrated soil moisture products that utilize satellite observations. The 5th workshop will emphasize soil moisture applications and bring together satellite, in situ, and model-based soil moisture information developers and users to focus on the derivation, validation and exploitation of soil moisture data from both passive and active microwave satellite missionsand electro-optical instruments. This upcoming workshop emphasizes the importance of integrated soil moisture data for meteorological, hydrological, agricultural, energy and ecological applications, such as for monitoring and early warning systems, modeling tools, and predictive and feedback capabilities. The scope of the 5th Soil Moisture Workshop includes:

• (1) Applications in Agriculture and Food Security;
• (2) Applications in Hydrology and Water Security;
• (3) Satellite Product Validation;
• (4) Spatial and Temporal Analysis of Soil Moisture; and
• (5) The Soil Moisture Demonstration Project (SMDP).

Capacity building is fundamental to all societal applications of integrated soil moisture datasets and will be addressed at the workshop. The SMAP Cal/Val workshop is also scheduled for 22-23, October 2018 at George Mason University, Fairfax Campus as well. Abstract submission deadline is June 30, 2018. Selected papers will be published in peer review journals.
The SMW2018 website: genri.gmu.edu/smw2018.
See details in the flyer.

We would like to inform you about the following product naming correspondence, valid starting from 12 April :
H SAF product H16 corresponds to the EUMETSAT files Metop-B ASCAT soil moisture 12.5 km sampling NRT;
H SAF product H103 corresponds to EUMETSAT files Metop-B ASCAT soil moisture 25 km sampling NRT;
H SAF product H101 corresponds to EUMETSAT files Metop-A ASCAT soil moisture 12.5 km sampling NRT;
H SAF product H102 corresponds to EUMETSAT files Metop-A ASCAT soil moisture 25 km sampling NRT;

Precipitation product PR-OBS-4 (H04) "Precipitation rate at ground by LEO/MW supported by GEO/IR (with flag for phase)" produced until September 4th, 2017 has been retired. The archived production can be obtained by placing an order, see the Download Products section.

Products H111 "Metop ASCAT DR2017 SSM time series 12.5 km sampling" (coverage 2007/01/01 - 2016/12/31) and H112 "Metop ASCAT DR2017 EXT SSM time series 12.5 km sampling" have been released. The products are currently available in the soil moisture section of H-SAF website and are available for downloading through the H-SAF ftp server.

We would like to inform that the generation and dissemination of H-SAF precipitation products is returning back to nominal conditions. The products are also being made available on H-SAF FTP site.

We are sorry to inform that due to technical problems the H-SAF precipitation products generation is experiencing an outage; the issue is under investigation and further communication will inform about the recovery of the nominal service and the provision of the missing products. We apologize for the inconvenience.

The precipitation product PR-OBS-3 (H03 - Precipitation rate at ground by GEO/IR supported by LEO/MW), currently distributed via EUMETCast and H-SAF FTP, will be updated on 18th of May 2017. The new output will include the associated quality flag encoded in grib2 format. For more details, please see the product's documentation.

Products SM-DAS-3 (H27) " Soil Wetness Index in the roots region by ERS/SCAT and Metop ASCAT-A scatterometer assimilation in a Land Data Assimilation System" have been released. The products are currently available in the soil moisture section of H-SAF website and are available for downloading through the H-SAF ftp server

The Vienna University of Technology (TU Wien) is pleased to announce the 4th Satellite Soil Moisture Validation and Application Workshop (19-20 September 2017) and the CCI Soil Moisture User Workshop (18 September 2017), to take place at its premises in Austria. The abstract submission deadline is 1 May 2017.
For more information please see the conference website.

Products H25, H108, H109 and H110 "Surface Soil Moisture Metop ASCAT Data Record Time Series" have been released. The products are currently available in the soil moisture section of H-SAF website and are available for downloading through the H-SAF ftp server