Sequential assimilation of soil moisture from atmospheric low-level parameters. Part I: sensitivity and calibration studies

Abstract

The main purpose of this paper is to examine the dependence of atmospheric low-level parameters upon soil moisture and how this dependence is affected by various factors (soil charactersitics, vegetation type, low-level wind). The sensitivity of atmospheric parameters to soil moisture is expressed as the statistical quantities of the optimal interpolation. The importance of observation errors, which define the relevance of the atmospheric parameters for the assimilation procedure, is also investigated. An analytical formulation of the optimal interpolation coefficients is proposed. -from Authors