Improved SMAP Dual-Channel Algorithm for the Retrieval of Soil Moisture
Author(s)
Chaubell, Mario Julian; Yueh, Simon H; Dunbar, R Scott; Colliander, Andreas; Chen, Fan; Chan, Steven K; Entekhabi, Dara; Bindlish, Rajat; O'Neill, Peggy E; Asanuma, Jun; Berg, Aaron A; Bosch, David D; Caldwell, Todd; Cosh, Michael H; Holifield Collins, Chandra; Martinez-Fernandez, Jose; Seyfried, Mark; Starks, Patrick J; Su, Zhongbo; Thibeault, Marc; Walker, Jeffrey; ... Show more Show less
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The soil moisture active passive (SMAP) mission was designed to acquire L-band radiometer measurements for the estimation of soil moisture (SM) with an average ubRMSD of not more than 0.04 m3 m-3 volumetric accuracy in the top 5 cm for vegetation with a water content of less than 5 kg m 2. Single-channel algorithm (SCA) and dual-channel algorithm (DCA) are implemented for the processing of SMAP radiometer data. The SCA using the vertically polarized brightness temperature (SCA-V) has been providing satisfactory SM retrievals. However, the DCA using prelaunch design and algorithm parameters for vertical and horizontal polarization data has a marginal performance. In this article, we show that with the updates of the roughness parameter $h$ and the polarization mixing parameters Q, a modified DCA (MDCA) can achieve improved accuracy over DCA; it also allows for the retrieval of vegetation optical depth (VOD or τ). The retrieval performance of MDCA is assessed and compared with SCA-V and DCA using four years (April 1, 2015 to March 31, 2019) of in situ data from core validation sites (CVSs) and sparse networks. The assessment shows that SCA-V still outperforms all the implemented algorithms.
Date issued
2020-01Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering; Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary SciencesJournal
IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing
Publisher
Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE)
Citation
M. J. Chaubell et al., "Improved SMAP Dual-Channel Algorithm for the Retrieval of Soil Moisture," in IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing, vol. 58, no. 6, pp. 3894-3905, June 2020 © 1980-2012 IEEE.
Version: Author's final manuscript
ISSN
1558-0644
0196-2892