On the value of combining different modelled soil moisture products for European drought monitoring

In the context of evaluating the occurrence of drought events over Europe, soil moisture 11 maps provide an invaluable resource to quantify the effects of rainfall deficits on vegetated 12 lands. Spatially distributed models represent the main option to successfully monitor this 13 quantity over large areas in a cost effective way. This work has the double aim of: (i) 14 intercompare three soil moisture outputs obtained by different land-surface models 15 (LISFOOD, CLM and TESSEL) through long (> 6 years) in-situ measured datastreams, and (ii) 16 quantify the added value of combining the estimates of these three models by means of a 17 simple ensemble approach. Generally, the three models return similarly soil moisture 18 anomalies over most of Europe, with notable exceptions during winter in North and 19 extreme East Europe and during summer in Mediterranean regions. The comparison with in 20 situ data suggests no substantial differences among the models, with LISFLOOD slightly 21 outperform the other two in terms of correlation. The combined soil moisture anomalies 22 obtained via the ensemble-mean approach are characterized by an increase of both the 23 correlation and the accuracy in retrieving extreme events compared to the single models; however, the number of observed extreme events actually captured by 24 the ensemble model 25 does not increase significantly if compared to the single models. Overall, the ensemble 26 model results skillful, with an all site average skill score of about 0.4.

CAMMALLERI Carmelo;  MICALE Fabio;  VOGT Juergen; 

2015-04-27

ELSEVIER SCIENCE BV

JRC94345

0022-1694,   

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S002216941500270X,    https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC94345,   

10.1016/j.jhydrol.2015.04.021,