4th SMOS Workshop

SMOS is ESA’s second Earth Explorer Opportunity mission and is designed to improve the development of climatological, meteorological and hydrological models by observing soil moisture and ocean salinity.

Since the mission has recently entered a new phase of its development – Phase B, which means that the preliminary design is now underway and the scientific support activities launched during Phase A are now complete, the workshop promises to be an exciting event where a range of results will be presented. It will provide the necessary forum to present the science community with the achievements that have been made so far within the framework of the SMOS project and discuss the next steps to be taken. It is also planned to address the issues of calibration and validation and operational data retrieval. Ways in which to improve the current version of the SMOS End-to-End Performance Simulator, software that enables engineers and scientists to simulate SMOS data acquisition for different instrument designs and mission scenarios, will also be focused upon.

This event, which is of significant importance to the further development of SMOS, will be held at the University of Porto, Portugal on 14 – 16 April. During the second and third day several splinter sessions covering specific aspects of the project will provide the opportunity to discuss open issues. The workshop will end with a plenary session where a synopsis of the splinters will be given.

Because Portuguese industry is now involved in the development of the SMOS level 1 processor there will be a SMOS Information Day following the workshop on 17 April. The objective of this Information Day is to attract interest from the Portuguese science community and as such will provide detailed information on the mission objectives, the status of the project and the scientific activities that have been performed so far.