Blending Satellite Observed, Model Simulated, and in Situ Measured Soil Moisture over Tibetan Plateau

The inter-comparison of different soil moisture (SM) products over the Tibetan Plateau (TP) reveals the inconsistency among different SM products, when compared to in situ measurement. It highlights the need to constrain the model simulated SM with the in situ measured data climatology. In this study, the in situ soil moisture networks, combined with the classification of climate zones over the TP, were used to produce the in situ measured SM climatology at the plateau scale. The generated TP scale in situ SM climatology was then used to scale the model-simulated SM data, which was subsequently used to scale the SM satellite observations. The climatology-scaled satellite and model-simulated SM were then blended objectively, by applying the triple collocation and least squares method. The final blended SM can replicate the SM dynamics across different climatic zones, from sub-humid regions to semi-arid and arid regions over the TP. This demonstrates the need to constrain the model-simulated SM estimates with the in situ measurements before their further applications in scaling climatology of SM satellite products.

[1]  Y. Kerr,et al.  Evaluation of remotely sensed and modelled soil moisture products using global ground-based in situ observations , 2012 .

[2]  Yijian Zeng,et al.  Numerical analysis of air‐water‐heat flow in unsaturated soil: Is it necessary to consider airflow in land surface models? , 2011 .

[3]  Wade T. Crow,et al.  An objective methodology for merging satellite‐ and model‐based soil moisture products , 2012 .

[4]  Wouter Dorigo,et al.  Characterizing Coarse‐Scale Representativeness of in situ Soil Moisture Measurements from the International Soil Moisture Network , 2013 .

[5]  Jeffrey P. Walker,et al.  THE GLOBAL LAND DATA ASSIMILATION SYSTEM , 2004 .

[6]  Randal D. Koster,et al.  The Interplay between Transpiration and Runoff Formulations in Land Surface Schemes Used with Atmospheric Models , 1997 .

[7]  C. Taylor,et al.  Afternoon rain more likely over drier soils , 2012, Nature.

[8]  Zong-Liang Yang,et al.  The scale-dependence of SMOS soil moisture accuracy and its improvement through land data assimilation in the central Tibetan Plateau , 2014 .

[9]  Thomas J. Jackson,et al.  Soil moisture mapping at regional scales using microwave radiometry: the Southern Great Plains Hydrology Experiment , 1999, IEEE Trans. Geosci. Remote. Sens..

[10]  Klaus Scipal,et al.  A possible solution for the problem of estimating the error structure of global soil moisture data sets , 2008 .

[11]  J. Townshend,et al.  Global Percent Tree Cover at a Spatial Resolution of 500 Meters: First Results of the MODIS Vegetation Continuous Fields Algorithm , 2003 .

[12]  J. Qin,et al.  Evaluation of AMSR‐E retrievals and GLDAS simulations against observations of a soil moisture network on the central Tibetan Plateau , 2013 .

[13]  J. Eitzinger,et al.  The ASCAT Soil Moisture Product: A Review of its Specifications, Validation Results, and Emerging Applications , 2013 .

[14]  William R. Boos,et al.  Sensitivity of the South Asian monsoon to elevated and non-elevated heating , 2013, Scientific Reports.

[15]  Adriaan J. Teuling.  Technical note: Towards a continuous classification of climate using bivariate colour mapping , 2011 .

[16]  R. Jeu,et al.  Land surface temperature from Ka band (37 GHz) passive microwave observations , 2009 .

[17]  Zhongbo Su,et al.  Soil moisture mapping over the central part of the Tibetan Plateau using a series of ASAR WS images , 2012 .

[18]  Jun Qin,et al.  Recent climate changes over the Tibetan Plateau and their impacts on energy and water cycle: A review , 2014 .

[19]  David S. G. Thomas,et al.  World atlas of desertification. , 1994 .

[20]  Zhongbo Su,et al.  Maqu network for validation of satellite-derived soil moisture products , 2012, Int. J. Appl. Earth Obs. Geoinformation.

[21]  Randal D. Koster,et al.  On the Nature of Soil Moisture in Land Surface Models , 2009 .

[22]  A. Al Bitar,et al.  Global-Scale Comparison of Passive (SMOS) and Active (ASCAT) Satellite Based Microwave Soil Moisture Retrievals with Soil Moisture Simulations (MERRA-Land) , 2014 .

[23]  P. Wang,et al.  First results of the earth observation Water Cycle Multi-mission Observation Strategy (WACMOS) , 2014, Int. J. Appl. Earth Obs. Geoinformation.

[24]  Luca Brocca,et al.  Scaling and Filtering Approaches for the Use of Satellite Soil Moisture Observations , 2013 .

[25]  Yijian Zeng,et al.  Evaluation of ECMWF's soil moisture analyses using observations on the Tibetan Plateau , 2013 .

[26]  L. Isaksen,et al.  A simplified Extended Kalman Filter for the global operational soil moisture analysis at ECMWF , 2013 .

[27]  Jiancheng Shi,et al.  The Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) Mission , 2010, Proceedings of the IEEE.

[28]  Klaus Scipal,et al.  Structural and statistical properties of the collocation technique for error characterization , 2012 .

[29]  Matthias Drusch,et al.  Global Automated Quality Control of In Situ Soil Moisture Data from the International Soil Moisture Network , 2013 .

[30]  R. van der Velde,et al.  Soil moisture remote sensing using active microwaves and land surface modeling , 2010 .

[31]  Lazhu,et al.  A MULTISCALE SOIL MOISTURE AND FREEZE-THAW MONITORING NETWORK ON THE THIRD POLE , 2013 .

[32]  Yijian Zeng,et al.  Diurnal pattern of the drying front in desert and its application for determining the effective infiltration , 2009 .

[33]  Yi Y. Liu,et al.  Developing an improved soil moisture dataset by blending passive and active microwave satellite-based retrievals , 2011 .

[34]  Chunhua Zhang,et al.  Validation of temperature–precipitation based aridity index: Paleoclimatic implications , 2013 .

[35]  Jürgen Vogt,et al.  Towards identifying areas at climatological risk of desertification using the Köppen–Geiger classification and FAO aridity index , 2015 .

[36]  Zhongbo Su,et al.  Decomposition of Uncertainties between Coarse MM5–Noah-Simulated and Fine ASAR-Retrieved Soil Moisture over Central Tibet , 2012 .

[37]  Y. Kerr,et al.  The SMOS Mission: New Tool for Monitoring Key Elements of the Global Water Cycle This satellite mission will use new algorithms to try to forecast weather and estimate climate change from satellite measurements of the Earth's surface. , 2010 .

[38]  W. Wagner,et al.  Fusion of active and passive microwave observations to create an Essential Climate Variable data record on soil moisture , 2012 .

[39]  S. Seneviratne,et al.  Recent decline in the global land evapotranspiration trend due to limited moisture supply , 2010, Nature.

[40]  F. Pappenberger,et al.  ERA-Interim/Land: a global land surface reanalysis data set , 2015 .

[41]  Xiangqian Wu,et al.  Overview of Intercalibration of Satellite Instruments , 2013, IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing.

[42]  D. Lawrence,et al.  Regions of Strong Coupling Between Soil Moisture and Precipitation , 2004, Science.

[43]  V. Brovkin,et al.  Impact of soil moisture‐climate feedbacks on CMIP5 projections: First results from the GLACE‐CMIP5 experiment , 2013 .

[44]  Suxia Liu,et al.  Evaluation of Global Soil Wetness Project Soil Moisture Simulations , 1999 .

[45]  Yaoming Ma,et al.  The Tibetan plateau observatory of plateau scale soil moisture and soil temperature, Tibet - Obs, for quantifying uncertainties in coarse resolution satellite and model products , 2011 .

[46]  Donglin Guo,et al.  Simulation of permafrost and seasonally frozen ground conditions on the Tibetan Plateau, 1981–2010 , 2013 .

[47]  Olivier Talagrand,et al.  Assimilation of Observations, an Introduction (gtSpecial IssueltData Assimilation in Meteology and Oceanography: Theory and Practice) , 1997 .

[48]  E. Njoku,et al.  Vegetation and surface roughness effects on AMSR-E land observations , 2006 .

[49]  W. Wagner,et al.  An Intercomparison of ERS-Scat and AMSR-E Soil Moisture Observations with Model Simulations over France , 2009 .

[50]  Sonia I. Seneviratne,et al.  Observational evidence for soil-moisture impact on hot extremes in southeastern Europe , 2011 .

[51]  K. Moffett,et al.  Remote Sens , 2015 .

[52]  Antonio Trabucco,et al.  Climate change mitigation: a spatial analysis of global land suitability for Clean Development Mechanism afforestation and reforestation , 2008 .

[53]  W. Wagner,et al.  Soil moisture estimation through ASCAT and AMSR-E sensors: An intercomparison and validation study across Europe , 2011 .

[54]  Wouter Dorigo,et al.  [Global Climate] Soil Moisture in: State of the Climate in 2013 , 2014 .

[55]  Yijian Zeng,et al.  Reply to comment by Binayak P. Mohanty and Zhenlei Yang on “A simulation analysis of the advective effect on evaporation using a two‐phase heat and mass flow model” , 2013 .

[56]  Yijian Zeng,et al.  A simulation analysis of the advective effect on evaporation using a two‐phase heat and mass flow model , 2011 .

[57]  Saket Pande,et al.  Diagnosis of GLDAS LSM based aridity index and dryland identification. , 2013, Journal of environmental management.

[58]  W. Wagner,et al.  Evaluation of the ESA CCI soil moisture product using ground-based observations , 2015 .

[59]  R. Jeu,et al.  Multisensor historical climatology of satellite‐derived global land surface moisture , 2008 .

[60]  T. Schmugge,et al.  An Empirical ModelfortheComplexDielectric Permittivity ofSoils as a Function of WaterContent , 1980 .

[61]  B. Choudhury,et al.  Remote sensing of soil moisture content over bare field at 1.4 GHz frequency , 1981 .

[62]  W. Wagner,et al.  A Method for Estimating Soil Moisture from ERS Scatterometer and Soil Data , 1999 .

[63]  J. Thepaut,et al.  The ERA‐Interim reanalysis: configuration and performance of the data assimilation system , 2011 .

[64]  A. K. Betts,et al.  O ine validation of the ERA 40 surface scheme , 2000 .

[65]  Randal D. Koster,et al.  Bias reduction in short records of satellite soil moisture , 2004 .

[66]  Tandong Yao,et al.  ROOF OF THE WORLD: Tibetan Observation and Research Platform , 2008 .

[67]  Lars Isaksen,et al.  Initialisation of Land Surface Variables for Numerical Weather Prediction , 2014, Surveys in Geophysics.

[68]  T. Mo,et al.  A model for microwave emission from vegetation‐covered fields , 1982 .

[69]  Thomas R. H. Holmes,et al.  An evaluation of AMSR–E derived soil moisture over Australia , 2009 .

[70]  Yi Y. Liu,et al.  Error characterisation of global active and passive microwave soil moisture datasets. , 2010 .

[71]  Thomas J. Jackson,et al.  Validation of Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer Soil Moisture Products , 2010, IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing.

[72]  Yijian Zeng,et al.  Analysis of current validation practices in Europe for space-based climate data records of essential climate variables , 2015, Int. J. Appl. Earth Obs. Geoinformation.

[73]  J. Zeng,et al.  Evaluation of remotely sensed and reanalysis soil moisture products over the Tibetan Plateau using in-situ observations , 2015 .

[74]  Matthias Drusch,et al.  Observation operators for the direct assimilation of TRMM microwave imager retrieved soil moisture , 2005 .

[75]  Jessica Blunden,et al.  State of the Climate in 2011 , 2012 .

[76]  Jane Qiu,et al.  Climatology. Monsoon melee. , 2013, Science.

[77]  A. Stoffelen.  Toward the true near-surface wind speed: Error modeling and calibration using triple collocation , 1998 .

[78]  Arlindo da Silva,et al.  Data assimilation in the presence of forecast bias , 1998 .

[79]  Hannah L. Cloke,et al.  Land: a global land-surface reanalysis based on ERA-interim meteorological forcing , 2012 .

[80]  Baiping Zhang,et al.  A Preliminary Study of the Heating Effect of the Tibetan Plateau , 2013, PloS one.

[81]  A. Robock,et al.  The International Soil Moisture Network: a data hosting facility for global in situ soil moisture measurements , 2011 .

[82]  Luca Brocca,et al.  Global Soil Moisture Products: The Case of ASCAT Soil Moisture Product , 2013 .

[83]  Qing Bao,et al.  Thermal Controls on the Asian Summer Monsoon , 2012, Scientific Reports.

[84]  Yijian Zeng,et al.  Diurnal soil water dynamics in the shallow vadose zone (field site of China University of Geosciences, China) , 2009 .