《Land Surface Data Assimilation》.pdfVIP

Land Surface Data Assimilation Paul R. Houser, Gabriëlle J.M. De Lannoy, and Jeffrey P. Walker 1 Introduction Accurate knowledge of spatial and temporal land surface storages and fluxes are essential for addressing a wide range of important, socially relevant science, edu- cation, application and management issues. Improved estimates of land surface conditions are directly applicable to agriculture, ecology, civil engineering, water resources management, rainfall-runoff prediction, atmospheric process studies, climate and weather prediction, and disaster management (Houser et al. 2004). While in situ observational networks are improving, the only practical way to observe the land surface on continental to global scales is via satellite remote sens- ing. Though remote sensing can make spatially comprehensive measurements of various components of the land surface system, it cannot provide information on the entire system (e.g. deep moisture stores), and the measurements represent only a snapshot in time. Land surface process models may be used to continuously predict the temporal and spatial land system variations, but these predictions are often poor, due to model initialization, parameter and forcing errors, and inadequate model physics and/or resolution. Thus, satellite observations provide an incomplete snapshot of land surface con- ditions, while models provide a continuous estimate of land surface conditions subject to the model’s simplifications. Therefore, an attractive prospect is to com- bine the strengths of land surface models and observations (and minimize the weaknesses) to provide a superior land surface state estimate. This is the goal of land surface data assimilation. Data assimilation is the application of recursive Bayesian estimation to combine current and past data in an explicit dynamical model, using the model’s prognostic equations to provide time