SMOPS Blended Soil Moisture Product Improves Land Model Simulations

ESSIC/CICS Assistant Research Scientists Jifu Yin and Jicheng Liu as well as Post-doctoral Associate Mitchell Schull have a new paper out in Water Resources Research titled “An Intercomparison of Noah Model Skills With Benefits of Assimilating SMOPS blended and Individual Soil Moisture Retrievals”.

The paper compares blended and individual microwave satellite soil moisture data from Soil Moisture Operational Product System (SMOPS) and evaluates the benefits of assimilating blended and individual soil moisture retrievals.  The results of this study may help soil moisture data users choose data products from SMOPS.

Developed by the National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service (NESDIS)‐Center for Satellite Applications and Research (STAR), SMOPS is a combination of all available daily soil moisture retrievals from multiple satellite platforms.  It is unique in that it provides global blended soil moisture data in near real time.  SMOPS soil moisture data product can be obtained from the NOAA NESDIS website.

Dr. Jifu Yin’s research interests include data assimilation, drought monitoring, microwave satellite soil moisture retrievals and land surface model.

Dr. Jicheng Liu is a Visiting Scientist with the NOAA-NESDIS-STAR. His current research interests include developing soil moisture retrieval algorithms using data from microwave satellite sensors.

Dr. Mitchell Schull is also a Visiting Scientist with the NOAA-NESDIS-STAR. He is currently working with Christopher Hain to implement the ALEXI/DisALEXI modeling framework into an open-source environment for further collaboration with global stakeholders.

To read the paper, click here: “An Intercomparison of Noah Model Skills With Benefits of Assimilating SMOPS Blended and Individual Soil Moisture Retrievals”.