Comparison of the soil moisture products from FY-3B/MWRI and CLDAS-V1.0 over China

Abstract

FY-3B is the second meteorological satellite of China's FY3 (FengYun 3) series which was launched on November 5, 2010. There is a highly sensitive microwave radiometer on board the FY-3B satellite which is called the Microwave Radiation Imager (MWRI). The soil moisture product retrieved from the FY-3B/MWRI data provides global observations of land surface soil moisture. It provided very useful information during drought and flood monitoring. In order to validate this soil moisture product in China region, we tried to collect ground measured soil moisture data from the meteorological sites. However the spatial range of the data can only cover part area of China main land. In addition, the minimum depth of these data was 10cm which is not considered as the most suitable soil layer in the validation of remotely sensed soil moisture. Therefore we collected the CLDAS soil moisture analysis product which is derived from the China Meteorological Administration (CMA) Land Data Assimilation System, CLDAS-V1.0. The CMA Land Data Assimilation System is based on EnKF and land process models. The CLDAS soil moisture analysis product covered the whole China area with a spatial resolution of 1/16 ° × 1/16 °. This paper will give the comparison between these two products during the year 2012 and 2013.1