Hydrology and Earth System Sciences
www.hydrol-earth-syst-sci.net
1027-5606
1607-7938
13
10
2009
10.5194/hess-13-1887-2009
http://www.hydrol-earth-syst-sci.net/13/1887/2009/
http://www.hydrol-earth-syst-sci.net/13/1887/2009/hess-13-1887-2009.html
http://www.hydrol-earth-syst-sci.net/13/1887/2009/hess-13-1887-2009.pdf
1887
1896
2009-10-15
Soil moisture mapping over West Africa with a 30-min temporal resolution using AMSR-E observations and a satellite-based rainfall product
T. Pellarin
thierry.pellarin@hmg.inpg.fr
T. Tran
J.-M. Cohard
S. Galle
J.-P. Laurent
P. de Rosnay
T. Vischel
LTHE, CNRS-INSU, IRD, Université de Grenoble, BP 53, 38041 Grenoble Cedex 9, France
European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts, Reading, UK
An original and simple method to map surface soil moisture over large areas
has been developed to obtain data with a high temporal and spatial resolution
for the study of possible feedback mechanisms between soil moisture and
convection in West Africa. A rainfall estimation product based on Meteosat
geostationary satellite measurements is first used together with a simple
Antecedent Precipitation Index (API) model to produce soil moisture maps at a
spatial resolution of 10×10 km<sup>2</sup> and a temporal resolution of
30-min. However, given the uncertainty of the satellite-based rainfall
estimation product, the resulting soil moisture maps are not sufficiently
accurate. For this reason, a technique based on assimilating AMSR-E C-band
measurements into a microwave emission model was developed in which the
estimated rainfall rates between two successive AMSR-E brightness temperature
(<i>TB</i>) measurements are adjusted by multiplying them by a factor between
0 and 7 that minimizes the difference between simulated and observed <i>TB</i>s.
Ground-based soil moisture measurements obtained at three sites in
Niger, Mali and Benin were used to assess the method which was found to
improve the soil moisture estimates on all three sites.
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