ESTAR measurements during the Southern Great Plains experiment (SGP99)

During the Southern Great Plains experiment (SGP99), the electronically sca nned thinned array radiometer (ESTAR) mapped L-band brightness temperature over a swath about 50-km wide and 300 km long, extending west from Oklahoma City, OK, to El Reno, OK, and north from the Little Washita River watershe d to the Kansas border. ESTAR flew on the NASA P-3B Orion aircraft at an al titude of 7.6 km, and maps were made on seven days between July 8-20, 1999. The brightness temperature maps reflect the patterns of soil moisture expe cted from rainfall and are consistent with values of soil moisture observed at the research sites within the SGP99 study area and with previous measur ements in this area. The data add to the resources for hydrologic modeling in this area and are further validation of the technology represented by ES TAR as a potential path to a future mission to map soil moisture globally f rom space.