Authors: Sourabh Shrivastava Sarat C Kar Anu Rani Sharma
Publish Date: 2016/03/31
Volume: 129, Issue: 1-2, Pages: 305-320
Abstract
Variation of soil moisture during active and weak phases of summer monsoon JJAS June July August and September is very important for sustenance of the crop and subsequent crop yield As in situ observations of soil moisture are few or not available researchers use data derived from remote sensing satellites or global reanalysis This study documents the intercomparison of soil moisture from remotely sensed and reanalyses during dry spells within monsoon seasons in central India and central Myanmar Soil moisture data from the European Space Agency ESA—Climate Change Initiative CCI has been treated as observed data and was compared against soil moisture data from the ECMWF reanalysisInterim ERAI and the climate forecast system reanalysis CFSR for the period of 2002–2011 The ESA soil moisture correlates rather well with observed gridded rainfall The ESA data indicates that soil moisture increases over India from west to east and from north to south during monsoon season The ERAI overestimates the soil moisture over India while the CFSR soil moisture agrees well with the remotely sensed observation ESA Over Myanmar both the reanalysis overestimate soil moisture values and the ERAI soil moisture does not show much variability from year to year Daytoday variations of soil moisture in central India and central Myanmar during weak monsoon conditions indicate that because of the rainfall deficiency the observed ESA and the CFSR soil moisture values are reduced up to 01 m3/m3 compared to climatological values of more than 035 m3/m3 This reduction is not seen in the ERAI data Therefore soil moisture from the CFSR is closer to the ESA observed soil moisture than that from the ERAI during weak phases of monsoon in the study region
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