Abstract:
The Soil Moisture Active and Passive (SMAP) mission is being developed by NASA for launch in 2014 as one of four first-tier missions recommended by the U.S. National Research Council Committee on Earth Science and Applications from Space in 2007. The primary science objectives of SMAP are to enhance understanding of land surface controls on the water, energy and carbon cycles, and to determine their linkages. Moreover, the high-resolution soil moisture mapping provided by SMAP has practical applications in weather and seasonal climate prediction, agriculture, human health, drought and flood decision support. Here we describe the assimilation of SMAP observations for the generation of the planned SMAP Level 4 Surface and Root-zone Soil Moisture (L4_SM) product. Results on model and assimilation skill based on current soil moisture retrievals from AMSR-E will be presented.