ESSMRA V1.1: 3 km surface soil moisture reanalysis over Europe ( 2000 - 2015)

High-resolution soil moisture (SM) information is essential to many applications in hydrological and climate sciences. Here we present a 16 years (2000-2015) high-resolution surface soil moisture reanalysis (ESSMRA) dataset over Europe from a land surface data assimilation system. Satellite-derived soil moisture data from the European Space Agency Climate Change Initiative (ESA CCI) were assimilated into the community land surface model (CLM) using an ensemble Kalman filter data assimilation scheme, producing a 3 km daily soil moisture reanalysis dataset. Comparisons with the independent in-situ soil moisture observations supported the reliability of the dataset in capturing daily, inter-annual and intra-seasonal patterns. The dataset presented here provides surface soil moisture at a high sptiotemporal resolution which is important not only for research in agriculture, flood and drought forecast, land cover changes, and modeling of the regional carbon and water cycles, but can also be useful to validate soil moisture estimates from other modeling studies.