SOIL MOISTURE RETRIEVAL USING AQUARIUS/SAC-D RADIOMETER/SCATTEROMETER OBSERVATIONS

CINTIA BRUSCANTINI; FRANCISCO MATIAS GRINGS; HAYDEE KARSZENBAUM

Encuentro; 10th Aquarius/SAC-D Science Meeting; 2015

CONAE

p { margin-bottom: 0.1in; direction: ltr; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); line-height: 120%; }p.western { font-family: "Liberation Serif","Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; }p.cjk { font-family: "Droid Sans Fallback","Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; }p.ctl { font-family: "FreeSans"; font-size: 12pt; }During the almost 4 years ofAquarius operational life, we have focused our efforts towards thedevelopment of an alternative soil moisture product for the mission.In this context, an Observing System Simulation Experiment (OSSE) forAquarius was developed to assess the impact of sources of errors inthe soil moisture retrieval. Using Aquarius observations,different soil moisture retrieval algorithms were developed. A novelretrieval algorithm (BRA, Bayesian Retrieval Algorithm) wasdeveloped, which uses bayesian inference to retrieve soil moistureand optical depth using horizontal and vertical polarizationbrightness temperature. Advantages of BRA include: i) errors on theretrieved variables can be estimated in an univocal way, ii) it givesthe possibility to use prior information about the retrievedvariables (provided by other sensors or in situ historical data),iii) it can handle uncertainties on the ancillary parameters. Moreover, a radar-onlyretrieval algorithm for soil moisture mapping was applied to Aquariusscatterometer measurements. The algorithm is based on a nonlinearrelation between L-band backscatter and volumetric soil moisture anddoes not require ancillary information on the surface. Currently, we are working onan algorithm that also considers the improvement of the radiometersoil moisture spatial scale and on a combined active-passive soilmoisture retrieval that benefits from all the work done so far. p { margin-bottom: 0.1in; direction: ltr; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); line-height: 120%; }p.western { font-family: "Liberation Serif","Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; }p.cjk { font-family: "Droid Sans Fallback","Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; }p.ctl { font-family: "FreeSans"; font-size: 12pt; }