HR: 1330h
AN: H23B-04    [Abstracts]
TI: Estimating Evapotranspiration Using a Remote Sensing Driven Water Balance
AU: Rodell, M
EM: Matthew.Rodell@nasa.gov
AF: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Hydrological Sciences Branch Code 614.3, Greenbelt, MD 20771 United States
AU: Famiglietti, J S
EM: jfamigli@uci.edu
AF: University of California, Irvine, Department of Earth System Science, Irvine, CA United States
AU: * Houser, P R
EM: Paul.Houser@nasa.gov
AF: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Hydrological Sciences Branch Code 614.3, Greenbelt, MD 20771 United States
AU: Chen, J
EM: chen@csr.utexas.edu
AF: Center for Space Research, The University of Texas, Austin, TX United States
AU: Seneviratne, S
EM: sonia.seneviratne@env.ethz.ch
AF: Atmospberic and Climate Science ETH, Winterthurerstrasse 190, CH-8057, Zurich, Switzerland
AU: Viterbo, P
EM: Pedro.Viterbo@ecmwf.int
AF: European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts, ECMWF, Reading, United Kingdom
AU: Holl, S
EM: sholl@uci.edu
AF: University of California, Irvine, Department of Earth System Science, Irvine, CA United States
AU: Wilson, C R
EM: crwilson@mail.utexas.edu
AF: Department of Geological Sciences, The University of Texas, Austin, TX United States
AB: Evapotranspiration is difficult to estimate on regional, climatic scales. One approach is to use a water budget equation, i.e., total precipitation minus the sum of evapotranspiration and net runoff equals the change in terrestrial water storage. Satellite observations from GRACE, TRMM, and future precipitation and surface water missions will enable evapotranspiration to be computed as a residual of a careful, remote sensing based water budget. Here we describe the method for estimating evapotranspiration using data from GRACE along with observation based precipitation and runoff, which takes into account the unique nature of the GRACE observations. Evapotranspiration is estimated over the Mississippi River basin and compared with output from the land surface model and two operational atmospheric modeling systems. Results suggest that the new technique provides skill in evaluating modeled evapotranspiration, particularly in terms of bias.
DE: 1640 Remote sensing
DE: 1818 Evapotranspiration
DE: 1836 Hydrologic budget (1655)
DE: 1894 Instruments and techniques
DE: 3339 Ocean/atmosphere interactions (0312, 4504)
SC: Hydrology [H]
MN: 2005 Joint Assembly