Soil moisture and rainfall retrieval from AMSR2 data in Italy

In this paper, the soil moisture content (SMC) estimated from Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer 2 (AMSR2) through the ANN-based “HydroAlgo” algorithm is firstly compared with the outputs of the Soil Water Balance hydrological model (SWBM). The comparison is performed over Italy, by considering all the available overpasses of AMSR2, since July 2012. The SMC generated by Hydroalgo is then considered as input for generating a rainfall product through the SM2RAIN algorithm. The comparison between observed and estimated rainfall in central Italy provided satisfactory results with a substantial room for improvement. The aim of this work is to exploit the potential of AMSR2 for hydrological applications on a regional scale and in heterogeneous environments characterised by different surface covers at subpixel resolution.