The effect of satellite-derived surface soil moisture and leaf area index land data assimilation on streamflow simulations over France

Fairbairn, David; Barbu, Alina Lavinia; Napoly, Adrien; Albergel, Clément; Mahfouf, Jean-François; Calvet, Jean-Christophe

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-21-2015-2017

Articles | Volume 21, issue 4

https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-21-2015-2017

© Author(s) 2017. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-21-2015-2017

© Author(s) 2017. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

Articles | Volume 21, issue 4

Research article

|

13 Apr 2017

Research article |

| 13 Apr 2017

The effect of satellite-derived surface soil moisture and leaf area index land data assimilation on streamflow simulations over France

David Fairbairn, Alina Lavinia Barbu, Adrien Napoly, Clément Albergel, Jean-François Mahfouf, and Jean-Christophe Calvet

Supplement

https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-21-2015-2017-supplement

Data sets

SAFRAN atmospheric analysis Meteo-France http://mistrals.sedoo.fr/HyMeX/

LAI GEOV1 and SWI-001 version 2 Copernicus http://land.copernicus.eu/global/

French contribution to the Climate Sensitive Stations GRDC http://www.bafg.de/GRDC/EN/Home/homepage_node.html

Short summary

This study assesses the impact on river discharge simulations over France of assimilating ASCAT-derived surface soil moisture (SSM) and leaf area index (LAI) observations into the ISBA land surface model. Wintertime LAI has a notable impact on river discharge. SSM assimilation degrades river discharge simulations. This is caused by limitations in the simplified versions of the Kalman filter and ISBA model used in this study. Implementing an observation operator for ASCAT is needed.