A new Drought index from SMOS data is available at CATDS
Europe experience severe drought last summer. Such conditions need to be monitored and understood especially with regards to agronomical droughts (i.e. soil moisture deficit during essential phenological stages). For this purpose we derived an agronomical drought index from SMOS root zone soil moisture estimates.
This index, based on the water available in the root zone reflects the anomalies in terms of water availability, from very dry to very wet. The drought index is available globally and since the beginning of SMOS data (i.e., more than 13 years are now available) on a monthly basis.
This data set is freely available from CATDS. We are looking forward to receiving your comments and suggestions.
More information and product access here.