Soil moisture and temperature measuring networks in the Tibetan Plateau and their applications in validation of microwave products

摘要

Soil moisture is a key parameter in the land-atmosphere interactions over the Tibetan Plateau (TP), which plays an essential role in the Asian monsoon processes. Validation of satellite observed and/or modeled surface soil moisture is a particularly challenging work due to the scale issues. Additional challenge in this area is the harsh environment and heavy workload to establish a Soil Moisture and Temperature Measurement System (SMTMS) network. In this paper, we introduced two soil moisture and temperature monitoring networks that have dense measurements. Several applications with the data are presented, including current microwave products evaluation, new algorithm development and soil parameter optimization.