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Soil Moisture Assimilation

Accurately initializing soil moisture can improve seasonal forecasts of streamflow and of mid-latitude summer precipitation and air temperature over land. Soil moisture impacts are mediated through land-atmosphere feedback and memory in root zone soil moisture anomalies. Skill in atmospheric forecasts stemming from land initialization demonstrates that such land-atmosphere feedback exists. Land data assimilation systems use numerical land surface models along with observations of soil moisture and precipitation to provide enhanced estimates of soil moisture conditions.

Research highlights

The contributions of precipitation and soil moisture observations to the skill of soil moisture estimates in a land data assimilation system (2010)

Snow and soil moisture contributions to seasonal streamflow prediction (2009)

Contribution of soil moisture retrievals to land assimilation products (2008)

An adaptive ensemble Kalman filter for land data assimilation (2008)