Abstract
Socially and economically costly extreme weather events have become more prevalent in the last decade. Monitoring and early warning systems could help mitigate the impact of such events by allowing people to better prepare themselves to manage their responses to these events. One significant element of an effective warning system is soil moisture because it is a key determinant of the exchange of water and heat energy between the land and atmosphere, the partitioning of precipitation between infiltration and runoff, and therefore has an influence on weather patterns and streamflow. In addition, soil moisture governs plant water availability – the key to crop yield forecasting. For these reasons, a wide range of organizations use soil moisture information to better predict and monitor climate and weather phenomena such as floods and droughts. By improving soil moisture estimates, it may be possible to improve the monitoring and early warning systems upon which these organizations rely, and hence better mitigate the impacts of extreme weather events. Through case studies, this article discusses several uses of soil moisture data products from NASA's Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) mission to help improve soil moisture-related monitoring and early warning systems.
Highlights
T HE impacts of climate change have increased and become more prevalent in the last decade
The largest impacts were seen for dew-point temperature biases, as the improved soil moisture estimates resulted in overall drier conditions, which acted to reduce the daytime wet dewpoint temperature biases with Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP), by roughly 0.5°C when integrated over Canada [see Fig. 2(b)]
The results from this study indicate that the SMAP soil moisture change is able to capture the changes in drought intensity levels in the U.S Drought Monitor (USDM), and the change over a four-week interval correlated well with the one- month Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI) values
Summary
T HE impacts of climate change have increased and become more prevalent in the last decade. California has recently experienced an exceptional drought (2011–2017) resulting in record-breaking wildfires and causing severe economic losses–including $5.5 billion in agricultural losses from 2014 through 2016 [6], which was followed by other extreme droughts and fire seasons in 2018 and 2019. Monitoring and early warning systems could help mitigate the impact of such events by allowing people to better prepare themselves to manage their responses to these events. Lack of high-quality soil moisture information limits monitoring and early warning system capabilities to effectively reduce impacts of climate change. SMAP’s accuracy, global coverage, and frequent revisit are valuable for soil moisture-related monitoring and early warning systems, especially in areas where the ground measurement network is sparse. This article demonstrates how SMAP soil moisture information could help to monitor and possibly mitigate some of the impacts of climate change.
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