Comparison of Multiple Satellite Soil Moisture Products Using In-Situ Soil Moisture Observations Over the Continental United States

Abstract:

We evaluate the skill of multiple satellite-derived soil moisture products using in-situ soil moisture observations from over 50 long-record stations in the continental United States. The satellite products compared include AMSR-E, ASCAT, SMOS, TMI, ESA CCI, and SMAP. Daily volumetric water content and percentiles of volumetric water content from each satellite product is compared with the observations from the corresponding station. We evaluate the similarity between the satellite and in-situ products with regard to the climate and biome conditions of the area as well as the representativeness of the in-situ station for the satellite footprint. We find moderate-to-strong correspondence between all satellite products and in-situ soil moisture observations. Differences between the satellite and observation datasets are attributed to varying land cover conditions, snow cover, and the spatial mismatch of the point observation with the satellite product grid cell. In general, our results suggest that the satellite products evaluated can accurately capture temporal variability of soil moisture near the surface, but do show systematic offsets at several stations across the study region.