Ultimate Goal: Operationally obtain high quality land surface
conditions and fluxes.
•Optimal integration of land surface
observations and predictions.
•Continuous in
time & space; local to global scales; retrospective, real-time, and
forecasts.
Contributions:
•4DDA Fields: 4DDA process and new merged data fields useful for
research (process understanding), applications (floods/agriculture/drought), and weather/climate
prediction.
•Model refinement: Constant confrontation with observations will
force model improvements.
•Forecast improvement: Better initial conditions and improved models,
predictions of weather, climate, and hydrologic phenomena on various timescales will
improve.
•Observation needs: Define characteristics of most important
observations, establish observation error criteria.
Components:
•Observation: Land surface forcing, storages(states), fluxes, and
parameters (calibration).
•Simulation: Land system process models (Hydrology, Biogeochemistry,
etc.).
•Assimilation: Short-term state constraints=Energy and Water Storage (Temperature, Snow, Soil Moisture).