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Title: Soil moisture retrievals from the WindSat spaceborne polarimetric microwave radiometer

Author
item PARINUSSA, ROBERT - Collaborator
item Holmes, Thomas
item DE JEU, RICHARD - Vrije University
item Crow, Wade

Submitted to: BARC Poster Day
Publication Type: Abstract Only
Publication Acceptance Date: 3/22/2011
Publication Date: 4/27/2011
Citation: Parinussa, R.M., Holmes, T.R., De Jeu, R.A., Crow, W.T. 2011. Soil moisture retrievals from the WindSat spaceborne polarimetric microwave radiometer [abstract]. Abs. 40. BARC Poster Day.

Interpretive Summary:

Technical Abstract: Surface soil moisture plays an important role in many water- and energy-balanced related studies. It is an important parameter in several applications, such as numerical weather predictions, global change modelling, forecasting of surface runoff and modelling of evaporation. Soil moisture is considered to be one of the key parameters to understanding the interaction between the land and atmosphere as it determines the interactions between the portions of energy between the different water fluxes. Soil moisture retrievals from different satellite platforms may increase the temporal resolution (multiple observations per day) and may be combined directly when retrieved in a consistent way. A variety of satellite passive microwave radiometers have been observing the Earth’s surface from the late 1970’s onwards. The Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer –EOS (AMSR-E) onboard the AQUA satellite is one of the dominant satellites used for the retrieval of surface soil moisture. The WindSat multifrequency polarimetric microwave radiometer onboard the Coriolis satellite is based on AMSR-E but has some small changes in configuration (e.g. frequency, bandwidth, incidence angle and sensor calibration). To overcome these small changes an inter calibration was performed for C-, X- and Ka-band brightness temperature observations. The Land Parameter Retrievel Model (LPRM) is a radiative transfer based model that has successfully retrieved surface soil moisture from a series of (historical) satellite sensors. This model has been applied to the WindSat radiometer, with special emphasis on consistency with the implementation on AMSR-E data. Statistical Analysis with satellite and in situ soil moisture indicate that the quality of the newly derived WindSat soil moisture products is similar to that obtained with AMSR-E. The results of this study demonstrate that soil moisture from WindSat is consistent with existing soil moisture products derived using the LPRM. The WindSat soil moisture retrievals can, therefore easily be combined with other satellite products to increase the temporal resolution of satellite derived soil moisture observations.