Assimilation of global radar backscatter and radiometer brightness temperature observations to improve soil moisture and land evaporation estimates

H. Lievens, B. Martens, N.E.C. Verhoest, S. Hahn, R.H. Reichle, D. Gonzalez Miralles

Research output: Contribution to JournalArticleAcademicpeer-review

Abstract

Active radar backscatter (σ°) observations from the Advanced Scatterometer (ASCAT) and passive radiometer brightness temperature (TB) observations from the Soil Moisture Ocean Salinity (SMOS) mission are assimilated either individually or jointly into the Global Land Evaporation Amsterdam Model (GLEAM) to improve its simulations of soil moisture and land evaporation. To enable σ° and TB assimilation, GLEAM is coupled to the Water Cloud Model and the L-band Microwave Emission from the Biosphere (L-MEB) model. The innovations, i.e. differences between observations and simulations, are mapped onto the model soil moisture states through an Ensemble Kalman Filter. The validation of surface (0–10 cm) soil moisture simulations over the period 2010–2014 against in situ measurements from the International Soil Moisture Network (ISMN) shows that assimilating σ° or TB alone improves the average correlation of seasonal anomalies (R
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)194-210
JournalRemote Sensing of Environment
Issue number189
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2016

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