Near-surface Soil Moisture Observations Research Articles

Assessing the Performance of Separate Bias Kalman Filter in Correcting the Model Bias for Estimation of Soil Moisture Profiles

The performance of separate bias Kalman filter (SepKF) in correcting the model bias for the improvement of soil moisture profiles is evaluated by assimilating the near-surface soil moisture observations into a land surface model (LSM). First, an observing system simulation experiment (OSSE) is carried out, where the true soil moisture is known, two types of model bias (i.e., constant and sinusoidal) are specified, and the bias error covariance matrix is assumed to be proportional to the model forecast error covariance matrix with a ratio λ. Second, a real assimilation experiment is carried out with measurements at a site over Northwest China. In the OSSE, the soil moisture estimation with the SepKF is improved compared with ensemble Kalman filter (EnKF) without the bias filter, because SepKF can properly correct the model bias, especially in the situation with a large model bias. However, the performance of SepKF becomes slightly worse if the constant model bias increases or temporal variability of the sinusoidal model bias becomes large. It is suggested that the ratio λ should be increased (decreased) in order to improve the soil moisture estimation if temporal variability of the sinusoidal model bias becomes high (low). Finally, the assimilation experiment with real observations also shows that SepKF can further improve the estimation of soil moisture profiles compared with EnKF without the bias correction.

An analytical model for estimation of land surface net water flux from near-surface soil moisture observations

The accurate determination of land surface water fluxes at various spatiotemporal scales remains a challenge in hydrological sciences. It is intuitive that land surface net water flux (i.e., infiltration minus evapotranspiration) directly affects near-surface soil moisture. However, there exists no hydrological model suitable to calculate net water flux based on measured near-surface soil moisture data. This is a consequence of the mathematical structure of existing models that use ‘boundary conditions’ to determine ‘internal conditions’, whereas what is needed is a model amenable to use near-surface soil moisture data (an internal condition) to determine the surface water flux (a boundary condition). To pursue the idea of utilizing remotely-sensed or in situ (i.e., sensor networks) near surface soil moisture data for estimation of net water flux, we derived an analytical model via inversion of Warrick’s 1975 analytical solution to the linearized Richards’ equation for arbitrary time-varying surface flux boundary conditions. The applicability of the new analytical solution was evaluated based on actual water flux observations as well as HYDRUS-1D simulations for four vastly different sites in Arizona, California, Idaho, and Indiana. Our results demonstrate that the proposed model reasonably captures net water flux variations in natural settings, including layered and vegetated soils, especially at larger time scales (e.g., monthly). While the model works for a wide range of climatic conditions, the prediction accuracy is somewhat lower for extreme dry or wet conditions. A major advantage of the new model is that it does not require calibration, which provides an unprecedented opportunity for large scale estimation of land surface net water flux using remotely sensed near-surface soil moisture observations.

Data assimilation of soil water flow via ensemble Kalman filter: Infusing soil moisture data at different scales

This paper assesses the value of multi-scale near-surface (0∼5 cm) soil moisture observations to improve state-only or state-parameter estimation based on the ensemble Kalman filter (EnKF). To the best of our knowledge, studies on assimilating multi-scale soil moisture data into a distributed hydrological model with a series of detailed vertical soil moisture profiles are rare. Our analysis factors include spatial measurement scales, soil spatial heterogeneity, multi-scale data with contrasting information and systematic measurement errors. Results show that coarse-scale soil moisture data are also very useful for identifying finer-scale parameters and states given biased initial parameter fields, but it becomes increasingly difficult to recover the finer-scale spatial heterogeneity of soil property as the observation grids become coarser. In state-only estimation, near-surface soil moisture data result in improvement for shallow soil moisture profiles and degradation for deeper soil moisture profiles, with stronger influences from finer-scale data. With the decrease of background spatial heterogeneity of soil property, the value of coarse-scale data increases notably. Soil moisture data at two scales with contrasting information are found to be both useful. By updating spatially correlated soil hydraulic parameters, deviated observations still contain considerably useful information for finer-scale state-parameter estimation. Eventually, by presenting a difference information assimilation method based on EnKF we successfully extract useful information from soil moisture data containing systematic measurement errors. The current study can be extended to consider more complex atmosphere input and topography, etc.

Retrieval and validation of soil moisture from FRS-1 data set of radar imaging satellite (RISAT-1)

In this work, we estimated soil moisture (SM) by using dielectric constant properties of soil with radar backscattering coefficient (bc) from simulated annealing techniques of RISAT-1 (radar imaging satellite, based on synthetic aperture radar (SAR) technique) data. We examined the performance of simulated annealing in retrieving SM where the vegetation cover is not very high (NDVI ≈ 0.35 for wheat-dominated area on January 19, 2013).To overcome the land surface model limits on SM estimation accuracy, point measurement spatial coverage limits, and microwave remote sensing spatial-temporal sampling limits, we reduced uncertainties through a combination of these approaches. Near-surface SM measurements from the 5.35-GHz (C-band) channels of RISAT-1 were collocated against ground-truth data (collected during the flight time of RISAT-1 over the study area), to establish SAR-SM relationships for FRS-1(circular horizontal (RH) and circular vertical (RV)) data set of RISAT-1. Comparison with the limited ground-based point (total 24 points) measurements of SM content exhibited a net improvement when near-surface SM observations were assimilated. Comparison of the SM derived from the sigma naught (σ 0) (of RISAT-1 data set FRS-1) using the inversion algorithm with the observed measurements (using time domain reflectometry) of SM showed root mean square error of 0.24, nRMSE = 0.03, R-RMSE = 0.38, MAE = 0.63, NRMSE = 1.02, NSE = 1, d = 0.87, r 2 = 0.65, and RMSE% = 12.79 for RH polarized image while RV polarized image failed each statistical test for predicting good SM with respect to the observed SM. The ability to extract additional information comes at the expense of including more measurements, especially at frequencies lower than the L-band. This approach is therefore intended for future space-borne systems.

Improved water balance component estimates through joint assimilation of GRACE water storage and SMOS soil moisture retrievals

AbstractThe accuracy of global water balance estimates is limited by the lack of observations at large scale and the uncertainties of model simulations. Global retrievals of terrestrial water storage (TWS) change and soil moisture (SM) from satellites provide an opportunity to improve model estimates through data assimilation. However, combining these two data sets is challenging due to the disparity in temporal and spatial resolution at both vertical and horizontal scale. For the first time, TWS observations from the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) and near‐surface SM observations from the Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS) were jointly assimilated into a water balance model using the Ensemble Kalman Smoother from January 2010 to December 2013 for the Australian continent. The performance of joint assimilation was assessed against open‐loop model simulations and the assimilation of either GRACE TWS anomalies or SMOS SM alone. The SMOS‐only assimilation improved SM estimates but reduced the accuracy of groundwater and TWS estimates. The GRACE‐only assimilation improved groundwater estimates but did not always produce accurate estimates of SM. The joint assimilation typically led to more accurate water storage profile estimates with improved surface SM, root‐zone SM, and groundwater estimates against in situ observations. The assimilation successfully downscaled GRACE‐derived integrated water storage horizontally and vertically into individual water stores at the same spatial scale as the model and SMOS, and partitioned monthly averaged TWS into daily estimates. These results demonstrate that satellite TWS and SM measurements can be jointly assimilated to produce improved water balance component estimates.

Towards soil property retrieval from space: Proof of concept using in situ observations

Summary Soil moisture is a key variable that controls the exchange of water and energy fluxes between the land surface and the atmosphere. However, the temporal evolution of soil moisture is neither easy to measure nor monitor at large scales because of its high spatial variability. This is mainly a result of the local variation in soil properties and vegetation cover. Thus, land surface models are normally used to predict the evolution of soil moisture and yet, despite their importance, these models are based on low-resolution soil property information or typical values. Therefore, the availability of more accurate and detailed soil parameter data than are currently available is vital, if regional or global soil moisture predictions are to be made with the accuracy required for environmental applications. The proposed solution is to estimate the soil hydraulic properties via model calibration to remotely sensed soil moisture observation, with in situ observations used as a proxy in this proof of concept study. Consequently, the feasibility is assessed, and the level of accuracy that can be expected determined, for soil hydraulic property estimation of duplex soil profiles in a semi-arid environment using near-surface soil moisture observations under naturally occurring conditions. The retrieved soil hydraulic parameters were then assessed by their reliability to predict the root zone soil moisture using the Joint UK Land Environment Simulator model. When using parameters that were retrieved using soil moisture observations, the root zone soil moisture was predicted to within an accuracy of 0.04 m 3 /m 3 , which is an improvement of ∼0.025 m 3 /m 3 on predictions that used published values or pedo-transfer functions.

Ensemble square root filter assimilation of near-surface soil moisture and reference-level observations into a coupled land surface-boundary layer model

The potential for using the ensemble square root filter data assimilation technique to estimate soil moisture profiles, surface heat fluxes, and the state of the planetary boundary layer (PBL) is explored. An observing system simulation experiment is designed to mimic the assimilation of near-surface soil moisture observations (θ°) and in-situ measurements of 2-m temperature (T°), 2-m specific humidity (Q°), and 10-m horizontal winds [V°=(U°, V°)]. The background forecasts are generated by a one-dimensional coupled land surface-boundary layer model (CLS-BLM) with soil, surface-layer and PBL parameterization schemes similar to those used in the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model. Soil moisture, surface heat fluxes, and the state of the PBL evolve on different characteristic timescales, so the minimum assimilation time intervals required for skillful estimates of each target component are different. Correct estimates of the soil moisture profile are obtained effectively when a 6-h update time interval is used, while skillful estimates of surface fluxes and the PBL state require more frequent updates. The CLS-BLM requires a shorter assimilation time interval to correctly estimate the soil moisture profile than previously indicated by experiments using an off-line land surface model (LSM). Results from assimilating different subsets of observations show that θ° makes a larger contribution to soil moisture estimates, while T°, θ°, and V° are more important for estimates of surface heat fluxes and the PBL state. It is therefore necessary to combine these variables to accurately estimate the states of both the land surface and the PBL. Experimentation with different prescribed observational errors shows that the assimilation system is more sensitive to increases in observational errors than to reductions in observational errors.

The Impact of Rainfall Error Characterization on the Estimation of Soil Moisture Fields in a Land Data Assimilation System

Abstract This study presents a numerical experiment to assess the impact of satellite rainfall error structure on the efficiency of assimilating near-surface soil moisture observations. Specifically, the study contrasts a multidimensional satellite rainfall error model (SREM2D) to a simpler rainfall error model (CTRL) currently used to generate rainfall ensembles as part of the ensemble-based land data assimilation system developed at the NASA Global Modeling and Assimilation Office. The study is conducted in the Oklahoma region using rainfall data from a NOAA multisatellite global rainfall product [the Climate Prediction Center (CPC) morphing technique (CMORPH)] and the National Weather Service rain gauge–calibrated radar rainfall product [Weather Surveillance Radar-1988 Doppler (WSR-88D)] representing the “uncertain” and “reference” model rainfall forcing, respectively. Soil moisture simulations using the Catchment land surface model (CLSM), obtained by forcing the model with reference rainfall, are randomly perturbed to represent satellite retrieval uncertainty, and assimilated into CLSM as synthetic near-surface soil moisture observations. The assimilation estimates show improved performance metrics, exhibiting higher anomaly correlation coefficients (e.g., ~0.79 and ~0.90 in the SREM2D nonassimilation and assimilation experiments for root zone soil moisture, respectively) and lower root-mean-square errors (e.g., ~0.034 m3 m−3 and ~0.024 m3 m−3 in the SREM2D nonassimilation and assimilation experiments for root zone soil moisture, respectively). The more elaborate rainfall error model in the assimilation system leads to slightly improved assimilation estimates. In particular, the relative enhancement due to SREM2D over CTRL is larger for root zone soil moisture and in wetter rainfall conditions.

Assimilation of ASCAT near-surface soil moisture into the SIM hydrological model over France

Abstract. This study examines whether the assimilation of remotely sensed near-surface soil moisture observations might benefit an operational hydrological model, specifically Météo-France's SAFRAN-ISBA-MODCOU (SIM) model. Soil moisture data derived from ASCAT backscatter observations are assimilated into SIM using a Simplified Extended Kalman Filter (SEKF) over 3.5 years. The benefit of the assimilation is tested by comparison to a delayed cut-off version of SIM, in which the land surface is forced with more accurate atmospheric analyses, due to the availability of additional atmospheric observations after the near-real time data cut-off. However, comparing the near-real time and delayed cut-off SIM models revealed that the main difference between them is a dry bias in the near-real time precipitation forcing, which resulted in a dry bias in the root-zone soil moisture and associated surface moisture flux forecasts. While assimilating the ASCAT data did reduce the root-zone soil moisture dry bias (by nearly 50%), this was more likely due to a bias within the SEKF, than due to the assimilation having accurately responded to the precipitation errors. Several improvements to the assimilation are identified to address this, and a bias-aware strategy is suggested for explicitly correcting the model bias. However, in this experiment the moisture added by the SEKF was quickly lost from the model surface due to the enhanced surface fluxes (particularly drainage) induced by the wetter soil moisture states. Consequently, by the end of each winter, during which frozen conditions prevent the ASCAT data from being assimilated, the model land surface had returned to its original (dry-biased) climate. This highlights that it would be more effective to address the precipitation bias directly, than to correct it by constraining the model soil moisture through data assimilation.

Root zone soil moisture from the assimilation of screen-level variables and remotely sensed soil moisture

[1] In most operational NWP models, root zone soil moisture is constrained using observations of screen-level temperature and relative humidity. While this generally improves low-level atmospheric forecasts, it often leads to unrealistic model soil moisture. Consequently, several NWP centers are moving toward also assimilating remotely sensed near-surface soil moisture observations. Within this context, an EKF is used to compare the assimilation of screen-level observations and near-surface soil moisture data from AMSR-E into the ISBA land surface model over July 2006. Several issues regarding the use of each data type are exposed, and the potential to use the AMSR-E data, either in place of or together with the screen-level data, is examined. When the two data types are assimilated separately, there is little agreement between the root zone soil moisture updates generated by each, indicating that for this experiment the AMSR-E data could not have replaced the screen-level data to obtain similar surface turbulent fluxes. For the screen-level variables, there is a persistent diurnal cycle in the model-observations bias, which is not related to soil moisture. The resulting diurnal cycle in the analysis increments demonstrates how assimilating screen-level observations can lead to unrealistic soil moisture updates, reinforcing the need to assimilate alternative data sets. However, when the two data types are assimilated together, the near-surface soil moisture provides a much weaker constraint of the root zone soil moisture than the screen-level observations do, and the inclusion of the AMSR-E data does not substantially change the results compared to the assimilation of screen-level variables alone.

Revising the Ensemble-Based Kalman Filter Covariance for the Retrieval of Deep-Layer Soil Moisture

Abstract Previous studies have demonstrated that soil moisture in the top layers (e.g., within the top 1-m depth) can be retrieved by assimilating near-surface soil moisture observations into a land surface model using ensemble-based data assimilation algorithms. However, it remains a challenging issue to provide good estimates of soil moisture in the deep layers, because the error correlation between the surface and deep layers is low and hence is easily influenced by the physically limited range of soil moisture, probably resulting in a large noise-to-signal ratio. Furthermore, the temporally correlated errors between the surface and deep layers and the nonlinearity of the system make the retrieval even more difficult. To tackle these problems, a revised ensemble-based Kalman filter covariance method is proposed by constraining error covariance estimates in deep layers in two ways: 1) explicitly using the error covariance at the previous time step and 2) limiting the increase of the soil moisture error correlation with the increase of the vertical distance between the two layers. This method is then tested at three separate point locations representing different precipitation regimes. It is found that the proposed method can effectively control the abrupt changes of error covariance estimates between the surface layer and two deep layers. It significantly improves the estimates of soil moisture in the two deep layers with daily updating. For example, relative to the initial background error, after 150 daily updates, the error in the deepest layer reduces to 11.4%, 32.3%, and 27.1% at the wet, dry, and medium wetness locations, only reducing to 62.3%, 80.8%, and 47.5% with the original method, respectively. However, the improvement of deep-layer soil moisture retrieval is very slight when the updating frequency is reduced to once every three days.

A sequential model for disaggregating near-surface soil moisture observations using multi-resolution thermal sensors

A sequential model is developed to disaggregate microwave-derived soil moisture from 40 km to 4 km resolution using MODIS (Moderate Imaging Spectroradiometer) data and subsequently from 4 km to 500 m resolution using ASTER (Advanced Scanning Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer) data. The 1 km resolution airborne data collected during the three-week National Airborne Field Experiment 2006 (NAFE'06) are used to simulate the 40 km pixels, and a thermal-based disaggregation algorithm is applied using 1 km resolution MODIS and 100 m resolution ASTER data. The downscaled soil moisture data are subsequently evaluated using a combination of airborne and in situ soil moisture measurements. A key step in the procedure is to identify an optimal downscaling resolution in terms of disaggregation accuracy and sub-pixel soil moisture variability. Very consistent optimal downscaling resolutions are obtained for MODIS aboard Terra, MODIS aboard Aqua and ASTER, which are 4 to 5 times the thermal sensor resolution. The root mean square error between the 500 m resolution sequentially disaggregated and ground-measured soil moisture is 0.062 vol./vol. with a bias of − 0.045 vol./vol. and values ranging from 0.08 to 0.40 vol./vol.

Towards deterministic downscaling of SMOS soil moisture using MODIS derived soil evaporative efficiency

A deterministic approach for downscaling ∼ 40 km resolution Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS) observations is developed from 1 km resolution MODerate resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) data. To account for the lower soil moisture sensitivity of MODIS surface temperature compared to that of L-band brightness temperature, the disaggregation scale is fixed to 10 times the spatial resolution of MODIS thermal data (10 km). Four different analytic downscaling relationships are derived from MODIS and physically-based model predictions of soil evaporative efficiency. The four downscaling algorithms differ with regards to i) the assumed relationship (linear or nonlinear) between soil evaporative efficiency and near-surface soil moisture, and ii) the scale at which soil parameters are available (40 km or 10 km). The 1 km resolution airborne L-band brightness temperature from the National Airborne Field Experiment 2006 (NAFE'06) are used to generate a time series of eleven clear sky 40 km by 60 km near-surface soil moisture observations to represent SMOS pixels across the three-week experiment. The overall root mean square difference between downscaled and observed soil moisture varies between 1.4% v/v and 1.8% v/v depending on the downscaling algorithm used, with soil moisture values ranging from 0 to 15% v/v. The accuracy and robustness of the downscaling algorithms are discussed in terms of their assumptions and applicability to SMOS.

Requirements of a global near-surface soil moisture satellite mission: accuracy, repeat time, and spatial resolution

Soil moisture satellite mission accuracy, repeat time and spatial resolution requirements are addressed through a numerical twin data assimilation study. Simulated soil moisture profile retrievals were made by assimilating near-surface soil moisture observations with various accuracy (0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 10%v/v standard deviation) repeat time (1, 2, 3, 5, 10, 15, 20 and 30 days), and spatial resolution (0.5, 6, 12 18, 30, 60 and 120 arc-min). This study found that near-surface soil moisture observation error must be less than the model forecast error required for a specific application when used as data assimilation input, else slight model forecast degradation may result. It also found that near-surface soil moisture observations must have an accuracy better than 5%v/v to positively impact soil moisture forecasts, and that daily near-surface soil moisture observations achieved the best soil moisture and evapotranspiration forecasts for the repeat times assessed, with 1–5 day repeat times having the greatest impact. Near-surface soil moisture observations with a spatial resolution finer than the land surface model resolution (∼30 arc-min) produced the best results, with spatial resolutions coarser than the model resolution yielding only a slight degradation. Observations at half the land surface model spatial resolution were found to be appropriate for our application. Moreover, it was found that satisfying the spatial resolution and accuracy requirements was much more important than repeat time.