News and notifications

Dear users,

Please be informed that, effective from 21 July 2026, the dissemination of the following products will be suspended:

• H11- Snow status (dry/wet) by MW radiometry

• H13 - Snow water equivalent by MW radiometr

• H01 new rel. - Precipitation rate at ground by MW conical scanners

• H02B - Precipitation rate at ground by MW cross-track scanners

• H18  - Precipitation rate at ground by MW cross-track scanners ATMS

The products will continue to be generated operationally but not available to the users.

If sufficient evidence of operational usage is identified during the suspension period, we are committed to resume the service and dissemination of the product accordingly. Otherwise, the product will be permanently discontinued at the end of the 6-month suspension period. 

We apologize for any inconvenience this change may cause and remain available for any further information or support.

Dear Users,

the H SAF Team is pleased to announce that the new H SAF ESCAT-ASCAT Root-zone Soil Moisture Climate Data Record 0.1 deg sampling product (ID: H145) is now available on EUMETCast, covering the period 1991-2024. The data record extension (ID: H146) is available from 2025 and is updated daily with a 5-day latency.

The products are based on level 2 ESCAT-ASCAT SM assimilation from the ERS/Metop satellites. Expressed as a liquid soil wetness index over 4 layers from the surface down to 2.89 m.

The H145 and H146 products succeed the H141 (RZSM-DR2019-10km) and H142 (RZSM-DR-EXT-10km) products

Main characteristics of ESCAT-ASCAT RZSM DR v3 0.1 deg (H145) and ESCAT-ASCAT RZSM DR v3 EXT 0.1 deg (H146):

Variable: Soil moisture content in the root-zone (0-289 cm depth)

Unit: Liquid soil wetness index(0–1)

Spatial sampling/resolution: 0.1 degrees

Vertical sampling: 4 layers with depths of 0-7 cm, 7-28 cm, 28-100 cm, and 100-289 cm

Spatial coverage: Global (65°S, 180°W, 80°N, 180°E)

Timeliness: 5 days (for the H146 ICDR)

Format: netCDF4

For more information: https://hsaf.meteoam.it/products/soil-moisture

Dear Users,

H SAF is pleased to announce that the following Soil Moisture Products Data Records and related extention are currently realeased and available on the H SAF FTP:

• ASCAT SSM CDR v8 12.5 km (H121)
• ASCAT SSM CDR v8 EXT 12.5 km (H139)
• ASCAT SSM CDR v1 6.25 km (H129)
• ASCAT SSM CDR v1 EXT 6.25 km (H130)

All the details regarding these new products can be found in the H SAF website https://hsaf.meteoam.it/products/soil-moisture

Dear Users,

due to an error in the model parameters, the operational H SAF soil-moisture product H28 requires an update (details see below). The update will be implemented starting from the 23rd of September.

Change details: The downscaling (DIREX) parameters for the following Equi7Grid tiles have been re-computed due to a storage issue, where the first layer of the DIREX parameters was mistakenly applied to all layers. As a result, the ASCAT DIS SSM NRT product was limited in that equal weighting was applied to all directional inputs, rather than using the intended directional differentiation. This did not critically impact the overall product performance but may have reduced the spatial representativeness in certain areas.

EU500M_E054N000T6, EU500M_E042N000T6, EU500M_E048N000T6, EU500M_E060N000T6, EU500M_E012N018T6, EU500M_E054N024T6, EU500M_E048N024T6, EU500M_E060N024T6, EU500M_E054N030T6, EU500M_E072N018T6, EU500M_E072N030T6, EU500M_E066N012T6, EU500M_E054N036T6, EU500M_E066N024T6, EU500M_E066N006T6, EU500M_E072N012T6, EU500M_E066N018T6, EU500M_E066N030T6, EU500M_E072N024T6, EU500M_E066N036T6, EU500M_E066N000T6, EU500M_E072N006T6, EU500M_E078N006T6, EU500M_E060N030T6, EU500M_E036N042T6, EU500M_E036N036T6, EU500M_E060N036T6, EU500M_E042N006T6, EU500M_E054N048T6, EU500M_E054N042T6, EU500M_E048N030T6, EU500M_E072N000T6, EU500M_E018N006T6, EU500M_E060N018T6, EU500M_E048N036T6

Additionally, three tiles (EU500M_E054N024T6, EU500M_E048N024T6, EU500M_E060N024T6) were corrected because they were missing DIREX parameters along their southern borders.

Dear User

The H SAF Team is pleased to announce that the h40B, h42B precipitation products and h43 snow product are fully disseminated via Eumetcast. All products are generated for the full Meteosat-12, 0-degree disc and have operational status. .

H40B product, Based on the “Rapid Update” (RU) combined technique, leverages all new capabilities of MTG FCI instrument. Key to the RU blended satellite technique is a real time collection of time and space overlapping pixels from operational geostationary IR imagers and LEO MW sensors that for MTG means generating a full disk precipitation map every 10 minutes with a resolution of 2km (nadir). This increased time and space resolution makes h40 one of the best product for NRT hydrological monitoring, weather situation analysis and emergency management by National meteorological services and operational Agencies.

For further information:

• ATBD
• PUM
• PVR

H42 is a Level 3 precipitation product, providing hourly the 1 hour accumulated precipitation and every six hours (at 00, 06, 12 and 18 UTC) the 24 hours accumulated precipitation. The accumulated precipitation rate is obtained integrating all the available h40B precipitation estimation which means that the products uses all the accessible cross-track and conically scanning passive microwave radiometers (equipped with precipitation sensing channels). For its characteristics, the product can be effectively used for hydrological applications and for data assimilation in hydrological models and can be easily compared with global rainfall gridded datasets.

For further information:

• ATBD
• PUM
• PVR

H43 is a day-1 daily snow extent product covering the full MTG/FCI Disk at 2km resolution at nadir, utilizing the 10 minute temporal resolution of the instrument by combining the observations throughout the day. To provide better accuracy for different landscapes it is produced as two variants, flatland/forested and mountainous regions, that employ specifically tailored algorithms which are then combined and delivered as the final merged product. Final product contains both variants (flatland and mountainous) as well as the merged product to cater to different user needs in hydrological and meteorological applications. H43 product demonstrates strong capability in mapping snow cover across heterogeneous mountain landscapes, including areas with fragmented topography and mixed land cover. It effectively captures the dendritic snow distribution patterns along valley networks and the snow extent gradients on the fringes of slopes, where detection is often complicated by elevation changes, terrain shadowing, and variable vegetation cover.

For further information:

• ATBD
• PUM
• PVR

Dear User

The H SAF Team is pleased to announce that the new H SAF Metop ASCAT Surface Soil Moisture Near Real-Time 12.5km sampling product (ID: H29) is now available on EUMETCast .

This product is based on ASCAT data from the Metop satellites and provides soil moisture content in the surface layer (less then 5cm).

It is the successor of the H16 (Metop-B ASCAT NRT SSM 12.5km sampling) and H104 (Metop-C ASCAT NRT SSM 12.5km sampling) products

Main characteristics of ASCAT SSM 12.5km (H29):

• Variable: Soil moisture content in the surface layer (less then 5cm)
• Unit: Degree of saturation (0–100%)
• Spatial sampling/resolution: 6.25km/15x15km2 or 12.5km/25x25km2
• Spatial coverage: Global (65°S, 180°W, 80°N, 180°E)
• Timeliness: 115 min (for the NRT product)
• Format: netCDF4 and BUFR

For more information: https://hsaf.meteoam.it/products/soil-moisture?product=H29