Detecting hydrological consistency between soil moisture and precipitation and changes of soil moisture in summer over the Tibetan Plateau

Abstract

application, large number of missing gaps was shown on the west of the TP, where it is considered that the retrieval algorithms are largely affected by the permafrost covered in this region, leaving the ESA soil moisture product for further improvement. In application, the ESA soil moisture product was used to study the response of surface soil moisture to climate change on the TP. With the rapid warming and the overall wetting of the TP, soil moisture increases on the central of the TP with the increase of precipitation, and decreases in the southeast TP with the precipitation deduction. However, it decreases in the west TP, where it was probably influenced by both the insignificant precipitation changes and the significant increase of evaporation.Keywords Hydrological consistency · ESA soil moisture product · Soil moisture · Precipitation · Trends · Tibetan Plateau Abstract As the first purely multi-decadal satellitebased soil moisture product that spans over 35 years (from November 1978 to December 2013) on a daily basis designed for climate application, the applicability of the European Space Agency (ESA) soil moisture product, including the hydrological consistency between the product and the observed precipitation and the product continuity on the Tibetan Plateau (TP) were investigated. The results show that there is significant degree between the ESA soil moisture product and the observed precipitation. The positive anomaly of the ESA soil moisture product can reflect the occurrences of precipitation, but the precipitation may not definitely lead to soil moisture anomaly, which largely depends on the precipitation amounts. For climate

Responses of soil moisture to regional climate change over the Three Rivers Source Region on the Tibetan Plateau

“…In the work of Meng et al . (), the ESA soil moisture decreases in the west TP, and considerable uncertainties remain because the increase trend of precipitation is not significant when the evapotranspiration definitely increases. Gao et al .…”

“…Meng et al . () used partial correlations between trended soil moisture, precipitation, and air temperature to determine soil moisture responses to regional climate change. Changes in soil moisture are affected by a variety of meteorological factors such as precipitation, air temperature, and evapotranspiration.…”

“…Studies have suggested that partial correlation can be used to study the correlation between two meteorological factors (Meng et al ., ; Zhao et al ., ; Bai et al ., ). The spatial distribution of the partial correlation coefficient between trended precipitation and GLDAS‐NOAH025 soil moisture with correlation statistical significance at or above the 95% level are shown in Figure .…”

“…() noted that ESA soil moisture has a large potential for climate trend assessments, and Meng et al . () found that the ESA soil moisture product can reflect the dry/wet conditions in the TP. In this section, ESA soil moisture in the nonfreezing period from 1980 to 2013 is used to assess climatology and trends of soil moisture on the TRSR; the trends of soil moisture with correlation statistical significances at or above the 95% level are shown (Figure ).…”

Surface Freshwater Limitation Explains Worst Rice Production Anomaly in India in 2002

“…The ESA-CCI soil moisture data set has been used to evaluate soil moisture trends at the global [28] and regional scale e.g., over the Tibetan Plateau [29]. The ESA-CCI soil moisture has already been extensively validated over the India continent as well [30][31][32][33].…”