TY - JOUR
T1 - The effect of assimilating satellite-derived soil moisture data in SiBCASA on simulated carbon fluxes in Boreal Eurasia
AU - Van Der Molen, M.K.
AU - De Jeu, R.A.M.
AU - Wagner, W.
AU - Van Der Velde, I.R.
AU - Kolari, P.
AU - Kurbatova, J.
AU - Varlagin, A.
AU - Maximov, T.C.
AU - Kononov, A.V.
AU - Ohta, T.
AU - Kotani, A.
AU - Krol, M.C.
AU - Peters, W.
PY - 2016
Y1 - 2016
N2 - Boreal Eurasia is a region where the interaction between droughts and the carbon cycle may have significant impacts on the global carbon cycle. Yet the region is extremely data sparse with respect to meteorology, soil moisture, and carbon fluxes as compared to e.g. Europe. To better constrain our vegetation model SiBCASA, we increase data usage by assimilating two streams of satellite-derived soil moisture. We study whether the assimilation improved SiBCASA's soil moisture and its effect on the simulated carbon fluxes. By comparing to unique in situ soil moisture observations, we show that the passive microwave soil moisture product did not improve the soil moisture simulated by SiBCASA, but the active data seem promising in some aspects. The match between SiBCASA and ASCAT soil moisture is best in the summer months over low vegetation. Nevertheless, ASCAT failed to detect the major droughts occurring between 2007 and 2013. The performance of ASCAT soil moisture seems to be particularly sensitive to ponding, rather than to biomass. The effect on the simulated carbo n fluxes is large, 5-10% on annual GPP and TER, tens of percent on local NEE, and 2% on area-integrated NEE, which is the same order of magnitude as the inter-annual variations. Consequently, this study shows that assimilation of satellite-derived soil moisture has potentially large impacts, while at the same time further research is needed to understand under which conditions the satellite-derived soil moisture improves the simulated soil moisture.
AB - Boreal Eurasia is a region where the interaction between droughts and the carbon cycle may have significant impacts on the global carbon cycle. Yet the region is extremely data sparse with respect to meteorology, soil moisture, and carbon fluxes as compared to e.g. Europe. To better constrain our vegetation model SiBCASA, we increase data usage by assimilating two streams of satellite-derived soil moisture. We study whether the assimilation improved SiBCASA's soil moisture and its effect on the simulated carbon fluxes. By comparing to unique in situ soil moisture observations, we show that the passive microwave soil moisture product did not improve the soil moisture simulated by SiBCASA, but the active data seem promising in some aspects. The match between SiBCASA and ASCAT soil moisture is best in the summer months over low vegetation. Nevertheless, ASCAT failed to detect the major droughts occurring between 2007 and 2013. The performance of ASCAT soil moisture seems to be particularly sensitive to ponding, rather than to biomass. The effect on the simulated carbo n fluxes is large, 5-10% on annual GPP and TER, tens of percent on local NEE, and 2% on area-integrated NEE, which is the same order of magnitude as the inter-annual variations. Consequently, this study shows that assimilation of satellite-derived soil moisture has potentially large impacts, while at the same time further research is needed to understand under which conditions the satellite-derived soil moisture improves the simulated soil moisture.
U2 - 10.5194/hess-20-605-2016
DO - 10.5194/hess-20-605-2016
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84957600528
SN - 1027-5606
VL - 20
SP - 605
EP - 624
JO - Hydrology and Earth System Sciences
JF - Hydrology and Earth System Sciences
IS - 2
ER -