El Nino Watch
How much water is in the soil down to about 1 m (the root zone), from NASA's SMAP satellite with a land model. Often 2-3 days behind.
Map layers
SMAP measures the moisture of the top few centimetres of soil from space; the Level 4 product combines it with a land model to estimate water in the root zone (the layer plants draw from).
Dry soils are one of the first signs of an El Nino drought on land, before reservoirs drop.
Brown/orange = dry, green/blue = wet (see legend). Compare with a few weeks earlier using the date slider.