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RESEARCH PRODUCT

Seasonal Analysis of Surface Soil Moisture Dry-Downs in a Land-Atmosphere Hotspot as Seen by LSM and Satellite Products

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The soil drying process is a challenging framework to assess climatic, hydrologic and ecosystem processes. This work develops a seasonal analysis of temporal e-folding decay ( $\tau$ ) of surface soil moisture dry-downs using ORCHIDEE land surface model and SMOS observations over South Eastern South America (SESA). Results show that the soil drying process depends on both location and season, and that the modeled drying velocity is faster than the observed one, even when modeled data is sampled at the same frequency as the observations. Differences between observed and modeled data have been found both in the analysis of the regional overall $\tau$ and in the spatial patterns of $\tau$ estimates. A seasonal timescale analysis is presented here for further insight of soil moisture dry-downs, allowing to reconcile differences between observations and models.