Land surface properties play a major role in convective precipitation events through impacting the amount of surface evaporation which results in changes to near surface temperature and humidity. This study examines the effects of using soil moisture data from the North American Regional Reanalysis (NARR) and the Soil Moisture Ocean Salinity Satellite (SMOS) on short term weather forecasts using the Weather Research and Forecasting Model (WRF). SMOS soil moisture data were compared to in-situ observations and it was found that although they captured the spatial variation in soil moisture, the actual measurements had a dry bias of roughly 0.10 m3/m3. Large differences existed between the in-situ observations, even for probes only a few meters apart. Observations from different sensors within a SMOS footprint differed from each other by a larger amount than they differed from the SMOS retrieval. Removing the mean and normalizing the data brought the in-situ observations into better agreement with each other and with SMOS but they still contained substantial differences. WRF sensitivity experiments demonstrated that changes to initial values of soil moisture resulted in no significant changes in precipitation. However, more of an impact was seen when the vegetation was changed, with barren vegetation yielding a substantial decrease in precipitation. Adding soil moisture resulted in significant changes to 2 m temperature and dewpoint relative to the control runs for each vegetation type. However, it was found that convective available potential energy and moist static energy change little, as the temperature and humidity impacts on these variables cancel each other out, which explain the limited precipitation response. SMOS data resulted in no significant changes in precipitation forecasts but had some impacts on temperature and humidity forecasts. However, because these results were not seen in all cases, no definitive conclusions about the usefulness of SMOS for high resolution numerical modeling can be made at this time. These results provide major implications for future satellite missions such as Soil Moisture Active Passive showing that experiments using true data assimilation methods which give only partial weight to satellite data may also not provide significant improvements to weather forecasts.
Subject (authority = RUETD)
Topic
Atmospheric Science
RelatedItem (type = host)
TitleInfo
Title
Rutgers University Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Identifier (type = RULIB)
ETD
Identifier
ETD_5398
PhysicalDescription
Form (authority = gmd)
electronic resource
InternetMediaType
application/pdf
InternetMediaType
text/xml
Extent
xi, 126 p. : ill.
Note (type = degree)
Ph.D.
Note (type = bibliography)
Includes bibliographical references
Note (type = statement of responsibility)
by Thomas William Collow
Subject (authority = ETD-LCSH)
Topic
Soils--Environmental aspects
Subject (authority = ETD-LCSH)
Topic
Weather forecasting
Subject (authority = ETD-LCSH)
Topic
Moisture--Measurement
RelatedItem (type = host)
TitleInfo
Title
Graduate School - New Brunswick Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Identifier (type = local)
rucore19991600001
Location
PhysicalLocation (authority = marcorg); (displayLabel = Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey)
Rutgers University. Graduate School - New Brunswick
AssociatedObject
Type
License
Name
Author Agreement License
Detail
I hereby grant to the Rutgers University Libraries and to my school the non-exclusive right to archive, reproduce and distribute my thesis or dissertation, in whole or in part, and/or my abstract, in whole or in part, in and from an electronic format, subject to the release date subsequently stipulated in this submittal form and approved by my school. I represent and stipulate that the thesis or dissertation and its abstract are my original work, that they do not infringe or violate any rights of others, and that I make these grants as the sole owner of the rights to my thesis or dissertation and its abstract. I represent that I have obtained written permissions, when necessary, from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis or dissertation and will supply copies of such upon request by my school. I acknowledge that RU ETD and my school will not distribute my thesis or dissertation or its abstract if, in their reasonable judgment, they believe all such rights have not been secured. I acknowledge that I retain ownership rights to the copyright of my work. I also retain the right to use all or part of this thesis or dissertation in future works, such as articles or books.