Passive microwave emission from smooth bare soils: Developing a simple model to predict near surface water content

Abstract

MICRO-SWEAT is a coupled microwave emission and soilvegetation-atmosphere transfer scheme. It can predict, among other things, the L band (21 cm wavelength) microwave brightness temperature ( T B ) for a smooth bare soil from knowledge of the soil hydraulic properties and local meteorological data. T B is the product of the apparent emissivity ( e app ) and the effective physical temperature of the soil profile ( T eff ). The modelled relationship between e app and average 0-2 cm soil water content was used to develop a simple semi-empirical model, which predicts the near surface water content from knowledge of the particle size distribution and e app . T eff was found to be comparable to the soil temperature at 11 cm depth, and was estimated using a simple sinusoidal function based on thermal diffusivity to extrapolate the temperature at 11 cm depth from knowledge of the diurnal variation in air temperature. The dependence of T B on incidence angle was predicted by MICRO-SWEAT and also incorporated. This simple model was then successfully used to predict the 0-2 cm water content from knowledge of T B, the air temperature regime and the particle size distribution, for data collected at various look angles over three different soils using a truck-based radiometer.