Long term soil moisture mapping over the Tibetan plateau using special sensor microwave/imager

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Abstract

This paper discusses soil moisture retrievals over the Tibetan Plateau from brightness temperature (TB's) observed by the Special Sensor Microwave Imagers (SSM/I's) during the warm seasons of the period from July 1987 to December 2008. The Fundamental Climate Data Record (FCDR) of F08, F11 and F13 SSM/I satellites by the Precipitation Research Group of Colorado State University is used for this study. A soil moisture retrieval algorithm is developed based on a radiative transfer model that simulates top-of-atmosphere TB's whereby effects of atmosphere are calculated from near-surface forcings obtained from a bias-corrected dataset. Validation of SSM/I retrievals against in situ measurements for a two-and-half year period (225 matchups) gives a Root Mean Squared Error of 0.046 m3 mg-3. The agreement between retrievals and Noah simulations from the Global Land Data Assimilation System is investigated to further provide confidence in the reliability of SSM/I retrievals at the Plateau-scale. Normalised soil moisture anomalies (N) are computed on a warm seasonal (May-October) and on a monthly basis to analyse the trends present within the products available from July 1987 to December 2008. The slope of linear regression functions between N and time is used to quantify the trends. Both the warm season and monthly N indicate severe wettings of 0.8 to almost 1.6 decadeg-1 in the centre of the Plateau. Correlations are found by the trend with elevation for the warm season as a whole and the individual months May, September and October. The observed wetting of the Tibetan Plateau agrees with recent findings on permafrost retreat, precipitation increase and potential evapotranspiration decline. © Author(s) 2014.

Figures

  • Fig. 1. The elevation of areas > 3500 m a.s.l., representing the Tibetan Plateau, is indicated by the GTOPO30 digital elevation model, land below 3500 m is shown as grey and water (oceans and seas) is white. Within a subset of LandSat TM false colour image covering part of the Naqu river basin, the location of the soil moisture/temperature station are shown.
  • Table 1. SSM/I sensor characteristics and platforms.
  • Fig. 2. Land cover classification of the Tibetan Plateau after the University of Maryland 1 km global land cover classification (Hansen et al., 1998).
  • Fig. 4. 1987–2008 soil moisture climatology for the months May to October derived from SSM/I observations.
  • Fig. 3. Overview of the algorithm and procedures adopted for derivation of the soil moisture products from the SSM/I observations.
  • Fig. 5. Difference between the 1987–2008 SSM/I retrieved optical depth climatology of August and the months May to October, respectively.
  • Fig. 6. Soil moisture measurements, SSM/I retrievals, AMSR-E LPRM estimates and GLDAS-Noah simulations of the 0.0–0.1 m soil layer at the Naqu network (91.89◦ E, 31.36◦ N, WSG84) for the period 2005 to 2008.
  • Fig. 7. SSM/I retrievals plotted against the arithmetic mean of soil moisture measureme ts collected at four stations within a single footprint (225 matchups).

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CITATION STYLE

APA

Van Der Velde, R., Salama, M. S., Pellarin, T., Ofwono, M., Ma, Y., & Su, Z. (2014). Long term soil moisture mapping over the Tibetan plateau using special sensor microwave/imager. Hydrology and Earth System Sciences, 18(4), 1323–1337. https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-18-1323-2014

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