Preliminary assessment of an integrated SMOS and MODIS application for global agricultural drought monitoring

An application of the Soil Moisture Agricultural Drought Index (SMADI) for global agricultural drought monitoring is presented. The index integrates surface soil moisture from the Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS) mission with the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) land surface temperature (LST) and Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) and allows for global drought monitoring at medium spatial scales (0.05°). Biweekly maps of SMADI were obtained from year 2010 to 2015 over all agricultural areas on Earth. The SMADI time-series were compared with state-of-the-art drought indices over the Iberian Peninsula. Results show a good agreement between SMADI and the …