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ABSTRACT
In recent years, remote sensing has become one newest technology for deriving soil moisture at large scales. Using a radiative transfer algorithm, we have derived soil moisture over the Tibetan Plateau from the brightness temperature of the microwave radiometer imager (MWRI) onboard China’s Fengyun 3B (FY3B) satellite. The derived FY3B soil moisture data are evaluated with in situ observations, the ERA-Interim reanalysis and the retrievals from microwave imager (TMI) onboard the Tropical Rainforest Measuring Mission (TRMM). The FY3B and the TMI data are found to have both overestimated the soil moisture magnitudes against in situ observations. The FY3B data significantly outperform the TMI retrievals and particularly the ERA-Interim data with respect to their temporal dynamics, which is more important in soil moisture applications. This finding suggests the promising potential for using FY3B microwave brightness temperature to derive soil moisture over the Tibetan Plateau.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.