Soil moisture retrieval from satellite images and its application to heavy rainfall simulation in eastern China

The soil water index (SWI) from satellite remote sensing and the observational soil moisture from agricultural meteorological stations in eastern China are used to retrieve soil moisture. The analysis of correlation coefficient (CORR), root-mean-square-error (RMSE) and bias (BIAS) shows that the retrieved soil moisture is convincible and close to the observation. The method can overcome the difficulties in soil moisture observation on a large scale and the retrieved soil moisture may reflect the distribution of the real soil moisture objectively. The retrieved soil moisture is used as an initial scheme to replace initial conditions of soil moisture (NCEP) in the model MM5V3 to simulate the heavy rainfall in 1998. Three heavy rainfall processes during 13–14 June, 18–22 June, and 21–26 July 1998 in the Yangtze River valley are analyzed. The first two processes show that the intensity and location of simulated precipitation from SWI are better than those from NCEP and closer to the observed values. The simulated heavy rainfall for 21–26 July shows that the update of soil moisture initial conditions can improve the model’s performance. The relationship between soil moisture and rainfall may explain that the stronger rainfall intensity for SWI in the Yangtze River valley is the result of the greater simulated soil moisture from SWI prior to the heavy rainfall date than that from NCEP, and leads to the decline of temperature in the corresponding area in the heavy rainfall days. Detailed analysis of the heavy rainfall on 13–14 June shows that both land-atmosphere interactions and atmospheric circulation were responsible for the heavy rainfall, and it shows how the SWI simulation improves the simulation. The development of mesoscale systems plays an important role in the simulation regarding the change of initial soil moisture for SWI.