<p>The geosynchronous C-band SAR mission Hydroterra (initially called G-CLASS) is one of three candidate missions for ESA's upcoming Earth Explorer 10 programme (scheduled for launch in 2027-2028). While current available satellite-borne C-band radar instruments have a rather long re-visit time (ASCAT METOP A,B,C: daily, Sentinel-1 A,B: 3-6 days), the fact that the Hydroterra satellite would be in a geosynchronous orbit opens the possibility for a C-band radar dataset with much finer temporal resolution. The image-formation process and operations concept incorporated within the Hydroterra system however requires choices of spatial and temporal resolution of the final product.</p><p>The presented experiment is intended to highlight potential benefits associated with high temporal sampling of Hydroterra observations for the understanding of daily and sub-daily soil-moisture and vegetation processes. In order to generate a backscatter dataset that simulates observations at high temporal resolution, a parametric first-order radiative transfer model (RT1) [1] is first calibrated with incidence-angle dependent Sentinel-1 C-band backscatter data as well as auxiliary soil-moisture (SM) and leaf-area-index (LAI) timeseries provided by the SURFEX-ISBA [2] land-surface model over south-western France. Once the model-parameters are obtained, a simulated backscatter timeseries at high temporal resolution is generated by performing a forward-simulation using the retrieved model-parametrizations and auxiliary SM and LAI datasets at hourly intervals.<br><br>The simulated dataset is then used (in conjunction with the LAI dataset) to simulate a retrieval of SM under a set of possible observation conditions, e.g. varying soil- and vegetation properties (represented via the RT1 model parameters), different temporal resolutions (1,3,6,12 hourly), incidence-angles and noise-levels. In a final step, the obtained SM retrievals from the simulated dataset are used to assess the effects on rainfall estimates obtained via the SM2RAIN [3] algorithm.</p><p>The outcome of those simulations is intended to help quantifying the choices of spatial and temporal resolution for the Hydroterra mission concept from a soil properties applications point of view.</p><p>&#160;</p><p>The work has been supported by the FFG-ASAP project "DWC-Radar" and the ESA project "Hydroterra (former G-CLASS) Phase-0 Science and Requirement".</p><p>&#160;</p><p>References:</p><p>[1] Quast, R.; Albergel, C.; Calvet, J.-C.; Wagner, W. A Generic First-Order Radiative Transfer Modelling Approach for the Inversion of Soil and Vegetation Parameters from Scatterometer Observations. <em>Remote Sens.</em> <strong>2019</strong>, <em>11</em>, 285. </p><p>[2] Masson, V.; Le Moigne, P.; Martin, E.; Faroux, S.; Alias, A.; Alkama, R.; Belamari, S.; Barbu, A.; Boone, A.; Bouyssel, F.; et al. The SURFEXv7.2 land and ocean surface platform for coupled or offline simulation of earth surface variables and fluxes. <span>Geosci. Model Dev.</span> <strong>2013</strong>, <span>6</span>, 929&#8211;960. </p><p>[3] Brocca, L., Massari, C., Ciabatta, L., Moramarco, T., Penna, D., Zucco, G., Pianezzola, L., Borga, M., Matgen, P., Mart&#237;nez-Fern&#225;ndez, J. (2015). Rainfall estimation from in situ soil moisture observations at several sites in Europe: an evaluation of SM2RAIN algorithm. <em>Journal of Hydrology and Hydromechanics</em>, 63(3), 201-209, doi:10.1515/johh-2015-0016. .</p>