Determining soil moisture from geosynchronous satellite infrared data: a feasibility study.

Abstract

In the absence of a current capability for global routine daily soil moisture observation, an infrared technique using existing instrumentation is sought. In order to determine which physical parameters observable from GOES are most sensitive to soil moisture and which are less prone to interference by seasonal changes, atmospheric effects, vegetation cover, etc, a detailed one-dimensional boundary layer-surface-soil model was employed. A series of model runs were then used to develop a simulated surface temperature dataset from which a soil moisture algorithm was developed. This algorithm uses only GOES observations to separate the soil moisture signal from the interfering effects on the surface temperature.-from Authors