•Goal: Provide
global land surface initialization states for the retrospective period of 1979 to present.
•A two-tiered approach.
•Tier 1:
Spin-up the land surface model off-line from the GCM using the best atmospheric forcing data available. Minimizes forcing bias!
•Tier 2:Assimilate
passive microwave remote sensing observations of
near-surface soil moisture from SMMR and SSM/I.
Minimizes model and forcing bias!