The soil moisture of much of southern and western Europe is below average after an exceptionally dry winter, which was also the second warmest winter on record. Northern Italy is among the worst-hit areas, along with France, Spain, the United Kingdom, as shown by the maps created utilising data from the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS) satellite.
The images compare the situation in the first three months of 2022 to that of this year: the green areas that indicated moisture have been replaced by brown ones, showing the terrain is dry. Many areas of Western Europe have soil moisture of 4% below average, reaching more than 8% below average in parts of Spain and Turkey.
Thanks to an innovative interferometric radiometer, the SMOS satellite manages to derive global maps of soil moisture every three days, achieving an accuracy of 4% at a spatial resolution of about 50 km. “It is like detecting a teaspoon of water mixed into a handful of soil,” the ESA experts explain.
© RIPRODUZIONE RISERVATA
