The potential of SMAP soil moisture data for analyzing droughts
Abstract
Identification of the onset and the end of droughts are important for socioeconomic planning. Different datasets and tools are either available or being generated for drought analysis to recognize the status of drought. The aim of this study is to understand the potential of the SMAP soil moisture (SM) data for identification of onset, persistence and withdrawal of droughts over the Contiguous United States. We are using the SMAP-passive level 3 soil moisture observations and the United States Drought Monitor (http://droughtmonitor.unl.edu) data for understanding the relation between change in SM and drought severity. The daily observed SM data are temporally averaged to match the weekly drought monitor data and subsequently the weekly, monthly, 3 monthly and 6 monthly change in SM and drought severity were estimated. The analyses suggested that the change in SM and drought severity are correlated especially over the mid-west and west coast of USA at monthly and longer time scales. The spatial pattern of the SM change maps clearly indicated the regions that are moving between different levels of drought severity. Further, the time series of effective saturation [Se =(θ-θr)/(θs-θr)] indicated the temporal dynamics of drought conditions over California which is recovering from a long-term drought. Additional analyses are being carried out to develop statistics between drought severity and soil moisture level.
- Publication:
-
AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2017
- Bibcode:
- 2017AGUFM.H21I1589R
- Keywords:
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- 1833 Hydroclimatology;
- HYDROLOGY;
- 1843 Land/atmosphere interactions;
- HYDROLOGY;
- 1855 Remote sensing;
- HYDROLOGY;
- 1866 Soil moisture;
- HYDROLOGY