Enhancing Model Skill by Assimilating SMOPS Blended Soil Moisture Product into Noah Land Surface Model

Abstract

Abstract Many studies that have assimilated remotely sensed soil moisture into land surface models have generally focused on retrievals from a single satellite sensor. However, few studies have evaluated the merits of assimilating ensemble products that are merged soil moisture retrievals from several different sensors. In this study, the assimilation of the Soil Moisture Operational Products System (SMOPS) blended soil moisture (SBSM) product, which is a combination of soil moisture products from WindSat, Advanced Scatterometer (ASCAT), and Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS) satellite sensors is examined. Using the ensemble Kalman filter (EnKF), a synthetic experiment is performed on the global domain at 25-km resolution to assess the impact of assimilating the SBSM product. The benefit of assimilating SBSM is assessed by comparing it with in situ observations from U.S. Department of Agriculture Soil Climate Analysis Network (SCAN) and the Surface Radiation Budget Network (SURFRAD). Time-averaged surface-layer soil moisture fields from SBSM have a higher spatial coverage and generally agree with model simulations in the global patterns of wet and dry regions. The impacts of assimilating SMOPS blended data on model soil moisture and soil temperature are evident in both sparsely and densely vegetated areas. Temporal correlations between in situ observations and net shortwave radiation and net longwave radiation are higher with assimilating SMOPS blended product than without the data assimilation.