Numerical investigation of the impact of uncertainties in satellite rainfall estimation and land surface model parameters on simulation of soil moisture

2005 ◽  
Vol 28 (12) ◽  
pp. 1336-1350 ◽  
Author(s):  
Faisal Hossain ◽  
Emmanouil N. Anagnostou
2012 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 2283-2319 ◽  
Author(s):  
V. Maggioni ◽  
E. N. Anagnostou ◽  
R. H. Reichle

Abstract. A sensitivity analysis is conducted to investigate the contribution of rainfall forcing relative to the model uncertainty in the prediction of soil moisture by integrating the NASA Catchment Land Surface Model (CLSM), forced with hydro-meteorological data, in the Oklahoma region. This study depicts different sources of uncertainty, namely, errors in the model input (i.e., rainfall estimates from satellite remote sensing observations) and errors in the land surface model itself. Specifically, rainfall-forcing uncertainty is introduced using a stochastic error model that generates reference-like ensemble rainfall fields from satellite rainfall products. The ensemble satellite rain fields are propagated through CLSM to produce soil moisture ensembles. Errors in CLSM are modeled with two different approaches: either by perturbing model parameters using the generalized likelihood uncertainty estimation (GLUE) technique or by adding randomly generated noise to the model prognostic variables. While the first method only addresses parametric uncertainty, the second one addresses both structural and parametric uncertainty. Despite this, a reasonable spread in soil moisture is achieved with relatively few parameter perturbations through GLUE, whereas the same ensemble width requires stronger prognostic perturbations with the standard random perturbation method. The probability of encapsulating the reference soil moisture simulation increases when the rainfall forcing uncertainty and the model uncertainty approaches are combined (compared with using only rainfall uncertainty). This improvement is more significant when using the GLUE technique to perturb CLSM parameters as opposed to perturbing the CLSM prognostic variables.


Author(s):  
Nemesio Rodriguez-Fernandez ◽  
Patricia de Rosnay ◽  
Clement Albergel ◽  
Philippe Richaume ◽  
Filipe Aires ◽  
...  

The assimilation of Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS) data into the ECMWF (European Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasts) H-TESSEL (Hydrology revised - Tiled ECMWF Scheme for Surface Exchanges over Land) model is presented. SMOS soil moisture (SM) estimates have been produced specifically by training a neural network with SMOS brightness temperatures as input and H-TESSEL model SM simulations as reference. This can help the assimilation of SMOS information in several ways: (1) the neural network soil moisture (NNSM) data have a similar climatology to the model, (2) no global bias is present with respect to the model even if regional differences can exist. Experiments performing joint data assimilation (DA) of NNSM, 2 metre air temperature and relative humidity or NNSM-only DA are discussed. The resulting SM was evaluated against a large number of in situ measurements of SM obtaining similar results to those of the model with no assimilation, even if significant differences were found from site to site. In addition, atmospheric forecasts initialized with H-TESSEL runs (without DA) or with the analysed SM were compared to measure of the impact of the satellite information. Although, NNSM DA has an overall neutral impact in the forecast in the Tropics, a significant positive impact was found in other areas and periods, especially in regions with limited in situ information. The joint NNSM, T2m and RH2m DA improves the forecast for all the seasons in the Southern Hemisphere. The impact is mostly due to T2m and RH2m, but SMOS NN DA alone also improves the forecast in July- September. In the Northern Hemisphere, the joint NNSM, T2m and RH2m DA improves the forecast in April-September, while NNSM alone has a significant positive effect in July-September. Furthermore, forecasting skill maps show that SMOS NNSM improves the forecast in North America and in Northern Asia for up to 72 hours lead time.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leqiang Sun ◽  
Stéphane Belair ◽  
Marco Carrera ◽  
Bernard Bilodeau

<p>Canadian Space Agency (CSA) has recently started receiving and processing the images from the recently launched C-band RADARSAT Constellation Mission (RCM). The backscatter and soil moisture retrievals products from the previously launched RADARSAT-2 agree well with both in-situ measurements and surface soil moisture modeled with land surface model Soil, Vegetation, and Snow (SVS). RCM will provide those products at an even better spatial coverage and temporal resolution. In preparation of the potential operational application of RCM products in Canadian Meteorological Center (CMC), this paper presents the scenarios of assimilating either soil moisture retrieval or outright backscatter signal in a 100-meter resolution version of the Canadian Land Data Assimilation System (CaLDAS) on field scale with time interval of three hours. The soil moisture retrieval map was synthesized by extrapolating the regression relationship between in-situ measurements and open loop model output based on soil texture lookup table. Based on this, the backscatter map was then generated with the surface roughness retrieved from RADARSAT-2 images using a modified Integral Equation Model (IEM) model. Bias correction was applied to the Ensemble Kalman filter (EnKF) to mitigate the impact of nonlinear errors introduced by multi-sourced perturbations. Initial results show that the assimilation of backscatter is as effective as assimilating soil moisture retrievals. Compared to open loop, both can improve the analysis of surface moisture, particularly in terms of reducing bias.  </p>


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jiaxin Tian ◽  
Jun Qin ◽  
Kun Yang

<p>Soil moisture plays a key role in land surface processes. Both remote sensing and model simulation have their respective limitations in the estimation of soil moisture on a large spatial scale. Data assimilation is a promising way to merge remote sensing observation and land surface model (LSM), thus having a potential to acquire more accurate soil moisture. Two mainstream assimilation algorithms (variational-based and sequential-based) both need model and observation uncertainties due to their great impact on assimilation results. Besides, as far as land surface models are concerned, model parameters have a significant implication for simulation. However, how to specify these two uncertainties and parameters has been confusing for a long time. A dual-cycle assimilation algorithm, which consists of two cycles, is proposed for addressing the above issue. In the outer cycle, a cost function is constructed and minimized to estimate model parameters and uncertainties in both model and observation. In the inner cycle, a sequentially based filtering method is implemented to estimate soil moisture with the parameters and uncertainties estimated in the outer cycle. For the illustration of the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm, the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer of earth Observing System (AMSR-E) brightness temperatures are assimilated into land surface model with a radiative transfer model as the observation operator in three experimental fields, including Naqu and Ngari on the Tibetan Plateau, and Coordinate Enhanced Observing (CEOP) reference site on Mongolia. The results indicate that the assimilation algorithm can significantly improve soil moisture estimation.</p>


2014 ◽  
Vol 15 (3) ◽  
pp. 1293-1302 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. Tugrul Yilmaz ◽  
Wade T. Crow

Abstract Triple collocation analysis (TCA) enables estimation of error variances for three or more products that retrieve or estimate the same geophysical variable using mutually independent methods. Several statistical assumptions regarding the statistical nature of errors (e.g., mutual independence and orthogonality with respect to the truth) are required for TCA estimates to be unbiased. Even though soil moisture studies commonly acknowledge that these assumptions are required for an unbiased TCA, no study has specifically investigated the degree to which errors in existing soil moisture datasets conform to these assumptions. Here these assumptions are evaluated both analytically and numerically over four extensively instrumented watershed sites using soil moisture products derived from active microwave remote sensing, passive microwave remote sensing, and a land surface model. Results demonstrate that nonorthogonal and error cross-covariance terms represent a significant fraction of the total variance of these products. However, the overall impact of error cross correlation on TCA is found to be significantly larger than the impact of nonorthogonal errors. Because of the impact of cross-correlated errors, TCA error estimates generally underestimate the true random error of soil moisture products.


2008 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 116-131 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bart van den Hurk ◽  
Janneke Ettema ◽  
Pedro Viterbo

Abstract This study aims at stimulating the development of soil moisture data assimilation systems in a direction where they can provide both the necessary control of slow drift in operational NWP applications and support the physical insight in the performance of the land surface component. It addresses four topics concerning the systematic nature of soil moisture data assimilation experiments over Europe during the growing season of 2000 involving the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) model infrastructure. In the first topic the effect of the (spinup related) bias in 40-yr ECMWF Re-Analysis (ERA-40) precipitation on the data assimilation is analyzed. From results averaged over 36 European locations, it appears that about half of the soil moisture increments in the 2000 growing season are attributable to the precipitation bias. A second topic considers a new soil moisture data assimilation system, demonstrated in a coupled single-column model (SCM) setup, where precipitation and radiation are derived from observations instead of from atmospheric model fields. For many of the considered locations in this new system, the accumulated soil moisture increments still exceed the interannual variability estimated from a multiyear offline land surface model run. A third topic examines the soil water budget in response to these systematic increments. For a number of Mediterranean locations the increments successfully increase the surface evaporation, as is expected from the fact that atmospheric moisture deficit information is the key driver of soil moisture adjustment. In many other locations, however, evaporation is constrained by the experimental SCM setup and is hardly affected by the data assimilation. Instead, a major portion of the increments eventually leave the soil as runoff. In the fourth topic observed evaporation is used to evaluate the impact of the data assimilation on the forecast quality. In most cases, the difference between the control and data assimilation runs is considerably smaller than the (positive) difference between any of the simulations and the observations.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Natthachet Tangdamrongsub ◽  
Michael F. Jasinski ◽  
Peter Shellito

Abstract. Accurate estimation of terrestrial water storage (TWS) at a meaningful spatiotemporal resolution is important for reliable assessments of regional water resources and climate variability. Individual components of TWS include soil moisture, snow, groundwater, and canopy storage and can be estimated from the Community Atmosphere Biosphere Land Exchange (CABLE) land surface model. The spatial resolution of CABLE is currently limited to 0.5° by the resolution of soil and vegetation datasets that underlie model parameterizations, posing a challenge to using CABLE for hydrological applications at a local scale. This study aims to improve the spatial detail (from 0.5° to 0.05°) and timespan (1981–2012) of CABLE TWS estimates using rederived model parameters and high-resolution meteorological forcing. In addition, TWS observations derived from the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) satellite mission are assimilated into CABLE to improve TWS accuracy. The success of the approach is demonstrated in Australia, where multiple ground observation networks are available for validation. The evaluation process is conducted using four different case studies that employ different model spatial resolutions and include or omit GRACE data assimilation (DA). We find that the CABLE 0.05° developed here improves TWS estimates in terms of accuracy, spatial resolution, and long-term water resource assessment reliability. The inclusion of GRACE DA increases the accuracy of groundwater storage (GWS) estimates and has little impact on surface soil moisture or evapotranspiration. The use of improved model parameters and improved state estimations (via GRACE DA) together is recommended to achieve the best GWS accuracy. The workflow elaborated in this paper relies only on publicly accessible global datasets, allowing reproduction of the 0.05° TWS estimates in any study region.


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elias C. Massoud ◽  
Chonggang Xu ◽  
Rosie Fisher ◽  
Ryan Knox ◽  
Anthony Walker ◽  
...  

Abstract. Vegetation plays a key role in regulating global carbon cycles and is a key component of the Earth System Models (ESMs) aimed to project Earth's future climates. In the last decade, the vegetation component within ESMs has witnessed great progresses from simple 'big-leaf' approaches to demographically-structured approaches, which has a better representation of plant size, canopy structure, and disturbances. The demographically-structured vegetation models are typically controlled by a large number of parameters, and sensitivity analysis is generally needed to quantify the impact of each parameter on the model outputs for a better understanding of model behaviors. In this study, we use the Fourier Amplitude Sensitivity Test (FAST) to diagnose the Community Land Model coupled to the Ecosystem Demography Model, or CLM4.5(ED). We investigate the first and second order sensitivities of the model parameters to outputs that represent simulated growth and mortality as well as carbon fluxes and stocks. While the photosynthetic capacity parameter Vc,max25 is found to be important for simulated carbon stocks and fluxes, we also show the importance of carbon storage and allometry parameters, which are shown here to determine vegetation demography and carbon stocks through their impacts on survival and growth strategies. The results of this study highlights the importance of understanding the dynamics of the next generation of demographically-enabled vegetation models within ESMs toward improved model parameterization and model structure for better model fidelity.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Edwards

<p>The parametrization of land-atmosphere interactions in numerical weather prediction and climate models is a topic of active and growing interest, especially in connection with extreme events such as heat waves and droughts. Semiarid regions are sensitive to drought and are currently expanding, but they are often poorly represented in numerical models. On forecasting timescales, comparisons of simulated land surface temperature against retrievals from satellites often show significant cold biases around noon, whilst, on climate timescales, land surface models often fail to represent droughts realistically. Inadequate treatment of the land surface, and particularly of soil properties and soil moisture, is likely to contribute to such errors.</p> <p>Efforts to develop improved parametrizations of soil processes in the JULES land surface model for application in weather prediction and climate simulations are underway. Whilst processes at the soil surface are a central part of this, to obtain acceptable performance it is also important to consider the surface flux budget as a whole, including the treatment of the plant canopy. Here, we shall describe the current status of developments aimed at improving the representation of evapotranspiration and ground heat fluxes in the model, noting the major issues encountered. The importance of accurately representing the impact of soil moisture on thermal properties will be stressed. Results from initial studies will be presented and we shall offer a perspective on future developments.<br /><br /></p>


Author(s):  
N. J. Steinert ◽  
J. F. González-Rouco ◽  
P. de Vrese ◽  
E. García-Bustamante ◽  
S. Hagemann ◽  
...  

AbstractThe impact of various modifications of the JSBACH Land Surface Model to represent soil temperature and cold-region hydro-thermodynamic processes in climate projections of the 21st century is examined. We explore the sensitivity of JSBACH to changes in the soil thermodynamics, energy balance and storage, and the effect of including freezing and thawing processes. The changes involve 1) the net effect of an improved soil physical representation and 2) the sensitivity of our results to changed soil parameter values and their contribution to the simulation of soil temperatures and soil moisture, both aspects being presented in the frame of an increased bottom boundary depth from 9.83 m to 1418.84 m. The implementation of water phase changes and supercooled water in the ground creates a coupling between the soil thermal and hydrological regimes through latent heat exchange. Momentous effects on subsurface temperature of up to ±3 K, together with soil drying in the high northern latitudes, can be found at regional scales when applying improved hydro-thermodynamic soil physics. The sensitivity of the model to different soil parameter datasets occurs to be low but shows important implications for the root zone soil moisture content. The evolution of permafrost under pre-industrial forcing conditions emerges in simulated trajectories of stable states that differ by 4 – 6 • 106 km2 and shows large differences in the spatial extent of 105 –106 km2 by 2100, depending on the model configuration.


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