0000000000061843

AUTHOR

Marie Parrens

Calibrating the effective scattering albedo in the SMOS algorithm: some first results

International audience; This study focuses on the calibration of the effective scattering albedo (ω) of vegetation in the soil moisture (SM) retrieval at L-Band. Currently, in the SMOS Level 2 and 3 algorithms, the value of ω is set to 0 for low vegetation and ∼ 0.06 – 0.08 for forests. Different parameterizations of vegetation (in terms of ω values) were tested in this study. The possibility of combining soil roughness and vegetation contributions as a single parameter (“combined” method) leads to an important simplification in the algorithm and was also evaluated here. Following these assumptions, retrieved values of SMOS SM were compared with SM data measured over many in situ sites worl…

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Evaluation of the most recent reprocessed SMOS soil moisture products: Comparison between SMOS level 3 V246 and V272

International audience; Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS) satellite has been providing surface soil moisture (SSM) and ocean salinity (OS) retrievals at L-band for five years (2010–2014). During these five years, the SSM retrieval algorithm i.e. the L-MEB (L-Band Microwave Emission of the Biosphere [1] model has been progressively improved and hence results in different versions of the SMOS SSM products. This study aims at evaluating the last improvement in the SSM products of the most recent SMOS level 3 (SMOSL3) reprocessing (SMOSL3_2.72) vs. an earlier version (SMOSL3_246). Correlation, bias, Root Mean Square Difference (RMSD) and unbiased RMSD (unbRMSD) were used as perform…

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Evaluating roughness effects on C-band AMSR-E observations

International audience; The usefulness of microwave remote sensing to retrieve near-surface soil moisture has already been demonstrated in many studies. However, obtaining high quality estimates of soil moisture is influenced by many effects from soil, vegetation and atmosphere; one of the key parameters is surface roughness. This research focusses on a semi-empirical method to evaluate the roughness effects from space borne observations. Global maps of roughness effects are evaluated at C-band from AMSR-E measurements.

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Analysis of the radar vegetation index and assessment of potential for improvement

The Radar Vegetation Index (RVI) is widely applied to indicate vegetation cover. The index includes the backscattering intensities of co- and cross-polarization that do not only contain information coming from vegetation scattering at longer wavelength (L-band), but also from the soil underneath. A forward modelling approach using active and passive microwave-derived parameters to obtain the scattering contribution of the soil is pursued. The idea of this research study is a subtraction of the attenuated soil scattering contribution from the measured backscattering intensities, to provide a clean vegetation-based solution, called improved RVI (RVII). For latter analysis, the vegetation volu…

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Analyzing the impact of using the SRP (Simplified roughness parameterization) method on soil moisture retrieval over different regions of the globe

International audience; This paper focuses on a new approach to account for soil roughness effects in the retrieval of soil moisture (SM) at L-band in the framework of the SMOS (Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity) mission: the Simplified Roughness Parameterization (SRP). While the classical retrieval approach considers SM and τ nad (vegetation optical depth) as retrieved parameters, this approach is based on the retrieval of SM and the TR parameter combining τ nad and soil roughness (TR τ nad + Hr /2). Different roughness parameterizations were tested to find the best correlation (R), bias and unbiased RMSE (ubRMSE) when comparing homogeneous retrievals of SM and in situ SM measurements carri…

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A new calibration of the effective scattering albedo and soil roughness parameters in the SMOS SM retrieval algorithm

Abstract This study focuses on the calibration of the effective vegetation scattering albedo (ω) and surface soil roughness parameters (H R , and N Rp , p = H,V) in the Soil Moisture (SM) retrieval from L-band passive microwave observations using the L-band Microwave Emission of the Biosphere (L-MEB) model. In the current Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS) Level 2 (L2), v620, and Level 3 (L3), v300, SM retrieval algorithms, low vegetated areas are parameterized by ω = 0 and H R  = 0.1, whereas values of ω = 0.06 − 0.08 and H R  = 0.3 are used for forests. Several parameterizations of the vegetation and soil roughness parameters (ω, H R and N Rp , p = H,V) were tested in this study, tre…

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Global-Scale Evaluation of Roughness Effects on C-Band AMSR-E Observations

Quantifying roughness effects on ground surface emissivity is an important step in obtaining high-quality soil moisture products from large-scale passive microwave sensors. In this study, we used a semi-empirical method to evaluate roughness effects (parameterized here by the parameter) on a global scale from AMSR-E (Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer for EOS) observations. AMSR-E brightness temperatures at 6.9 GHz obtained from January 2009 to September 2011, together with estimations of soil moisture from the SMOS (Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity) L3 products and of soil temperature from ECMWF’s (European Centre for Medium-range Weather Forecasting) were used as inputs in a retrieval…

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SMOS-IC : a revised SMOS product based on a new effective scattering albedo and soil roughness parameterization

International audience; This study presents a new SMOS (Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity) soil moisture (SM) product based on a different scattering albedo and soil roughness parameterization: the SMOS-IC (SMOS INRA-CESBIO) data set. In this study, several parameterizations of the vegetation and soil roughness parameters (co, H-R and N-RP, P = H, V) were tested and the retrieved SM was compared against in situ observations obtained from the International Soil Moisture Network (ISMN). Firstly, values of omega = 0.10, H-R = 0.4 and N-RP = -1 (P = H, V) were found globally. Secondly, a calibration of these parameters was obtained for the different land cover categories of the International Geo…

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Roughness and vegetation parameterizations at L-band for soil moisture retrievals over a vineyard field

Abstract The capability of L-band radiometry to monitor surface soil moisture (SM) at global scale has been analyzed in numerous studies, mostly in the framework of the ESA SMOS and NASA SMAP missions. To retrieve SM from L-band radiometric observations, two significant effects have to be accounted for, namely soil roughness and vegetation optical depth. In this study, soil roughness effects on retrieved SM values were evaluated using brightness temperatures acquired by the L-band ELBARA-II radiometer, over a vineyard field at the Valencia Anchor Station (VAS) site during the year 2013. Different combinations of the values of the model parameters used to account for soil roughness effects (…

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