# Soil moisture Satellite data gap for the Southwest Ethiopian domain

**URL:** <https://forum.ecmwf.int/t/soil-moisture-satellite-data-gap-for-the-southwest-ethiopian-domain/936>\
**Category:** C3S - Datasets and Usage\
**Tags:** c3s, ecv\_hydrology, ecv\
**Created:** [13 March 2020 17:10 UTC](https://forum.ecmwf.int/t/soil-moisture-satellite-data-gap-for-the-southwest-ethiopian-domain/936 "2020-03-13T17:10:14Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Michela](https://forum.ecmwf.int/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/898d66/32.png) [@Michela](https://forum.ecmwf.int/u/Michela)\
**Post date:** [13 March 2020 17:10 UTC](https://forum.ecmwf.int/t/soil-moisture-satellite-data-gap-for-the-southwest-ethiopian-domain/936/1 "2020-03-13T17:10:14Z")

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[Soil moisture gridded data from 1978 to present](https://cds.climate.copernicus.eu/cdsapp#!/dataset/satellite-soil-moisture?tab=overview)dataset has a permanent data gap for the Southwest Ethiopian domain. The reason is because&nbsp; Southwest Ethiopia is characterised by very dense vegetation and strong topography, which makes soil moisture retrievals from satellites very unreliable, if not totally impossible.