Hi, Dear, I’m downloading data from the SMOS satellite, from the ESA website, and I’m not able to open it in SNAP in the newest version. The downloaded data is L2 level, with .nc extension.
And I would like to know if there is a tutorial on how to extract soil moisture from SMOS.
Greetings and I await contact.
SMOS data looks like a NetCDF file. From my experience, NetCDF files are best handled in python using xarray or netcdf4. here are three use cases for you
- If you want to visualize the entire area and only have a couple of files use qgis or arc gis to visualize which is pretty straightforward.
- If you have multiple files and need values for a specific point or location use netcdf4 or xarray
- If you have multiple files and you need data for all the points use xarray/ netcdf4 with joblib/ dask to distribute the task over multiple cores, since python normally runs over one core, you need to parallelize the task over multiple cores for faster processing.
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If you have installed the the SMOS Toolbox then you should be able to open the files. You fin it via the Plugin Manager (Tools / Plugins).
If you have it already installed then please let us know which L2 files exactly you use, eg. the full name of one file.
The SMOS Toolbox provides tools and analysis methods specific for SMOS which QGis or ArcGis do not provide. And in Python you would nee to implement things on your one.
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I’m sorry. I was to quick with my reply. I ignored that your question is about the NetCDF files.
In deed these are not supported by SNAP. These files is not a raster format.
So the way @nirdesh suggested is an option or you stick to the earth explorer data.
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If you use EarthExplorer format you can work well with the data in SNAP/SMOS-BOX.
The NetCDF format can also be read, but it is not well supported. The reader is not fast because some conversion needs to be done so that SNAP can work with the data. That’ why I said it is not supported in the previous post. It is not really usable.