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ARS Home » Northeast Area » Beltsville, Maryland (BARC) » Beltsville Agricultural Research Center » Hydrology and Remote Sensing Laboratory » Research » Publications at this Location » Publication #378196
Research Project: Integrating Remote Sensing, Measurements and Modeling for Multi-Scale Assessment of Water Availability, Use, and Quality in Agroecosystems

Location: Hydrology and Remote Sensing Laboratory

Title: The contribution of gauge-based precipitation and SMAP brightness temperature observations to the skill of the SMAP Level-4 soil moisture product

Author
item REICHLE, R. - National Aeronautics And Space Administration (NASA)
item LIU, Q. - National Aeronautics And Space Administration (NASA)
item ARDIZZONE, J. - National Aeronautics And Space Administration (NASA)
item Crow, Wade
item DONG, J. - US Department Of Agriculture (USDA)
item DE LANNOY, G. - Catholic University Of Leuven
item KIMBALL, J. - University Of Montana
item KOSTER, R. - National Aeronautics And Space Administration (NASA)

Submitted to: Journal of Hydrometeorology
Publication Type: Peer Reviewed Journal
Publication Acceptance Date: 1/5/2021
Publication Date: 2/1/2021
Citation: Reichle, R., Liu, Q., Ardizzone, J., Crow, W.T., Dong, J., De Lannoy, G., Kimball, J., Koster, R. 2021. The contribution of gauge-based precipitation and SMAP brightness temperature observations to the skill of the SMAP Level-4 soil moisture product. Journal of Hydrometeorology. 22(2):405–424. https://doi.org/10.1175/JHM-D-20-0217.1.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1175/JHM-D-20-0217.1

Interpretive Summary: Soil moisture provides an important connection between the land surface water, energy, and carbon cycles. By routinely merging Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) satellite observations and gauge-based precipitation data into a numerical model of land surface water and energy balance processes, NASA generates the global, 9-km resolution, 3-hourly Level-4 Soil Moisture (L4_SM) data product. The SMAP L4_SM product supports agricultural drought monitoring and yield forecasting and is currently being used operationally by the USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service to monitor root-zone soil moisture availability in the central United States. Using additional model simulations and validation against independent measurements, we find that the SMAP and precipitation data contribute similarly, and largely independently, to the accuracy of the L4_SM product. SMAP’s contribution to L4_SM accuracy is particularly large in poorly instrumented regions, including portions of South America, Africa, and central Australia. This work will be used by NASA to improve the utility of the SMAP L4_SM product for agricultural drought monitoring and yield forecasting applications.

Technical Abstract: Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) mission L-band brightness temperature (Tb) observations are routinely assimilated into the Catchment land surface model to generate Level-4 Soil Moisture (L4_SM) estimates of global surface and root-zone soil moisture at 9-km, 3-hourly resolution with ~2.5-day latency. The Catchment model in the L4_SM algorithm is driven with 1/4-degree, hourly surface meteorological forcing data from the Goddard Earth Observing System (GEOS). Outside of Africa and the high latitudes, GEOS precipitation is corrected using Climate Prediction Center Unified (CPCU) gauge-based, 1/2-degree, daily precipitation. L4_SM soil moisture was previously shown to improve over land model-only estimates that use CPCU precipitation but no Tb assimilation (CPCU_SIM). Here, we additionally examine the skill of model-only (CTRL) and Tb assimilation-only (SMAP_DA) estimates derived without CPCU precipitation. Soil moisture is assessed versus in situ measurements in well-instrumented regions and globally through the Instrumental Variable (IV) method using independent soil moisture retrievals from the Advanced Scatterometer. At the in situ locations, SMAP_DA and CPCU_SIM have comparable soil moisture skill improvements relative to CTRL for the unbiased root-mean-square error (surface and root-zone) and correlation metrics (root-zone only). In the global average, SMAP Tb assimilation increases the surface soil moisture anomaly correlation by 0.10-0.11 compared to an increase of 0.02-0.03 from the CPCU-based precipitation corrections. The contrast is particularly strong in central Australia, where CPCU is known to have errors and observation-minus-forecast Tb residuals are larger when CPCU precipitation is used. Validation versus streamflow measurements in the contiguous U.S. reveals that CPCU precipitation provides most of the skill gained in L4_SM runoff estimates over CTRL.