Assimilation of soil moisture retrievals or brightness temperature observations from SMOS and SMAP into the GEOS-5 land surface model

Abstract:

Two L-band microwave missions are currently collecting passive microwave observations and aiming at an improved estimation of soil moisture. The ESA Soil Moisture Ocean Salinity (SMOS) mission and the NASA Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) mission both provide Level 1 brightness temperature products and derived Level 2 soil moisture retrieval products. The assimilation of these products into land surface models has potential to improve global estimates of soil moisture and other land surface variables. This presentation investigates the benefits and challenges of assimilating either retrievals or brightness temperature observations from either SMOS or SMAP into the Goddard Earth Observing System (GEOS-5) land surface model. It will be shown that the seasonal corrections introduced by retrieval assimilation are slightly different from those with brightness temperature assimilation as a result of the technical implementation of the assimilation scheme. Various resulting land surface variables will also be evaluated against the results from the operational SMAP Level 4 Soil Moisture (L4_SM) product, which assimilates SMAP brightness temperature data.