Remote Sensing Soil Moisture using Four Dimensional Data Assimilation of
TRMM Microwave Observations
Houser, Wang, and Choudhury NASA-TRMM Post-Launch
Opp.
GOAL: Develop an optimal method to extract spatially and temporally continuous soil
moisture from multi-frequency, multi-polarization, TRMM passive microwave
observations.
METHOD: Use land surface
predictions coupled to a radiative transfer model to predict microwave
brightness temperature, analyze differences, and project the correction back
to the model's soil moisture space.
Developed, calibrated, and implemented over the U.S. Southern Great
Plains.
BACKGROUND: TRMM's 10gHz
passive microwave is currently the most ideal soil moisture
sensor in space.
FUTURE: This system will be applicable to AMSR.
LDAS Relevance: The LDAS grid will be used, so resulting fields
and developed methods will be available for LDAS use. However, TRMM is limited to -38.5o to +
38.5o.