HR: 08:15h
AN: H41I-02    [Abstracts]
TI: The contribution of soil moisture retrievals to land data assimilation products
AU: * Reichle, R H
EM: rolf.reichle@nasa.gov
AF: University of Maryland, Baltimore County, Goddard Earth Sciences and Technology Center 1000 Hilltop Circle, Baltimore, MD 21250, United States
AU: * Reichle, R H
EM: rolf.reichle@nasa.gov
AF: NASA GSFC, Global Modeling and Assimilation Office Code 610.1 Greenbelt Rd, Greenbelt, MD 20771, United States
AU: Crow, W T
EM: Wade.Crow@ARS.USDA.GOV
AF: USDA/ARS, Hydrology and Remote Sensing Laboratory, Beltsville, MD 20705, United States
AU: Koster, R D
EM: randal.koster@gsfc.nasa.gov
AF: NASA GSFC, Global Modeling and Assimilation Office Code 610.1 Greenbelt Rd, Greenbelt, MD 20771, United States
AU: Sharif, H O
EM: Hatim.Sharif@utsa.edu
AF: University of Texas, Civil Engineeering Department, San Antonio, TX 78249, United States
AU: Mahanama, S P
EM: sarith@gmao.gsfc.nasa.gov
AF: University of Maryland, Baltimore County, Goddard Earth Sciences and Technology Center 1000 Hilltop Circle, Baltimore, MD 21250, United States
AU: Mahanama, S P
EM: sarith@gmao.gsfc.nasa.gov
AF: NASA GSFC, Global Modeling and Assimilation Office Code 610.1 Greenbelt Rd, Greenbelt, MD 20771, United States
AB: Satellite retrievals of surface soil moisture are subject to errors and cannot provide complete space-time coverage. Data assimilation systems merge the available satellite retrievals with information from land surface models that is spatio-temporally complete but likewise uncertain. For the design of new satellite missions it is critical to understand just how uncertain satellite retrievals can be and still be useful. Here, we present a synthetic data assimilation experiment that determines the contribution of satellite retrievals to the skill of land assimilation products as a function of retrieval and land model skill. We quantified how the skill of the assimilation products increases with the skill of the model and that of the retrievals. The skill of the surface and root zone soil moisture assimilation products always exceeds that of the model, that is, even retrievals of low quality contribute some information to the assimilation product, particularly if model skill is modest.
DE: 1816 Estimation and forecasting
DE: 1840 Hydrometeorology
DE: 1843 Land/atmosphere interactions (1218, 1631, 3322)
DE: 1855 Remote sensing (1640)
DE: 3315 Data assimilation
SC: Hydrology [H]
MN: 2007 Fall Meeting