Hi everyone:
I’m comparing SMOS AUX parameters with others. So I tried to convert SM_OPER_AUX_ECMWF_*.zip files to NetCDF4-CF. However, I can’t find any information about the time of each pixel except the filename. I even tried to convert it to another format but failed. How to get timestamps of pixels like the ones in SNAP??
Dear andych1977,
the SMOS ECMWF auxiliary files as they are provided by ESA do not contain any per-pixel time information. Instead they are composed from ECMWF forecast data which is - as far as I know - for SMOS derived from the ERA-INTERIM dataset with a time granularity of 6 hours.
The pixel-time displayed in SNAP is linearly interpolated using the product header paramters “Precise_Validity_Start” and “Precise_Validity_Stop”. As in the case of ECMWF data, this is an incorrect approach, there is no pixel time; the data is derived from model-calculations. We probably should add a flag that indicates this and suppresses the time-interpolation for non-satellite data.
Hope this clarifies the situation.
Tom
