Varying applicability of four different satellite-derived soil moisture products to global gridded crop model evaluation

Satellite-derived daily surface soil moisture products have been increasingly available, but their applicability to global gridded crop model (GGCM) evaluation is unclear. This study compares four different soil moisture products with the flux tower site observation at 18 cropland sites across the world where either of maize, soybean, rice and wheat is grown. These products include the first and second versions of Climate Change Initiative Soil Moisture (CCISM-1 and CCISM-2) datasets distributed by the European Space Agency and two different AMSR-E (Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer–Earth Observing System)-derived soil moisture datasets, separately provided by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (AMSRE-J) and U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (AMSRE-N). The comparison demonstrates varying reliability of these products in representing major characteristics of temporal pattern of cropland soil moisture by product and crop. Possible reasons for the varying reliability include the differences in sensors, algorithms, bands and criteria used when estimating soil moisture. Both the CCISM-1 and CCISM-2 products appear the most reliable for soybean- and wheat-growing area. However, the percentage of valid data of these products is always lower than other products due to relatively strict criteria when merging data derived from multiple sources, although the CCISM-2 product has much more data with valid retrievals than the CCISM-1 product. The reliability of the AMSRE-J product is the highest for maize- and rice-growing areas and comparable to or slightly lower than the CCISM products for soybean- and wheat-growing areas. The AMSRE-N is the least reliable in most location-crop combinations. The reliability of the products for rice-growing area is far lower than that of other upland crops likely due to the extensive use of irrigation and patch distribution of rice paddy in the area examined here. We conclude that the CCISM-1, CCISM-2 and AMSRE-J products are applicable to GGCM evaluation, while the AMSRE-N product is not. However, we encourage users to integrate these products with in situ soil moisture data especially when GGCMs simulations for rice are evaluated.