ESSIC/CISESS Assistant Research Scientist Jifu Yin (STAR/SMCD) is the first author of a new article in the Journal of Hydrology called “Improvements in the Forecasts of Near-Surface Variables in the Global Forecast System (GFS) via Assimilating ASCAT Soil Moisture Retrievals.”
With the development of the coupled system of NCEP- Global Forecast System (GFS) and NASA – Land Information System (LIS), the authors investigated the impact of assimilating the ASCAT soil moisture dataproducts on the weather forecast of GFS.
Validations results clearly show that improvement from the soil moisture data assimilation for probabilities of high quality forecasts can reach up to 1.7% for GFS precipitation, 3.2% for 2-meter minimum temperature, and 3.1% for 2-meter diurnal temperature range predictions, respectively. These results suggest that satellite soil moisture data assimilation could be beneficial for GFS numerical weather forecasts of NOAA-NCEP.
To read and download the paper, click here: “Improvements in the Forecasts of Near-Surface Variables in the Global Forecast System (GFS) via Assimilating ASCAT Soil Moisture Retrievals”.
