Among the new technologies for increasing irrigation efficiency is the
use of soil moisture sensors for automated irrigation.
Control: Maintain a uniform
supply of soil moisture through irrigation and avoid large amounts of nitrogen fertilizer.
If water is a central controlling aspect, then the interaction necessarily passes all the way through the space - time
dynamics of soil moisture.
Sheffield, J. & Wood, E. F. Characteristics of global and regional drought, 1950 — 2000: analysis
of soil moisture data from off - line simulation of the terrestrial hydrologic cycle.
But Miralles and his team clarified the interaction among these factors by analyzing a broader range of data, including temperature readings from weather balloons and satellite
measurements of soil moisture taken before and during the heatwaves.
The Copernicus Climate Change Service will also produce
analyses of soil moisture based directly on satellite data as part of its programme for sustaining the production and updating of Essential Climate Variable datasets.
Seasonal predictions
of soil moisture content over the US, in turn, have been shown to improve predictability of precipitation and temperature variations (Wang and Kumar 1998; Kanamitsu et al. 2003).
The Palmer Drought Severity Index, which is a
measure of soil moisture using precipitation measurements and rough estimates of changes in evaporation, has shown that from 1900 to 2002, the Sahel region of Africa has been experiencing harsher drought conditions.
As a result of soil and atmosphere feedbacks (Beljaars et al. 1996; Seneviratne et al. 2010), seasonal
predictions of soil moisture content over the US can further increase the predictability of precipitation and atmospheric temperature variations for up to several months (Zeng et al. 1999; Kanamitsu et al. 2003; Koster and Suarez 2003; Yang et al. 2004; Dirmeyer et al. 2013).
Scientists are hoping that newer satellites, like Europe's Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity or NASA's Soil Moisture Active Passive, can start to accumulate long - time
series of soil moisture data.
While previous observational studies generally focused on the relationship between precipitation deficits and the number of hot days, we investigate here the
influence of soil moisture (SM) on summer monthly maximum temperatures (TXx) using water balance model - based SM estimates (driven with observations) and temperature observations.
The unique Sodankylä ground measurement network is utilized in the quality control of the global satellite - based
monitoring of soil moisture and frost
The
amount of soil moisture is estimated as «0.001 % of the total water found on Earth,» but like the sweat it is critical to controlling temperature.
On average, across Asia, droughts lasting longer than three months will be more than twice as severe in
terms of their soil moisture deficit compared to the 1990 - 2005 period.
Unresolved issues that will be addressed in a series of forthcoming studies include the effects of ocean dynamics on the predictability of low - frequency atmosphere and land variability and the feedback
of soil moisture variations on atmospheric temperatures and circulation (e.g., Rowntree and Bolton 1983; Atlas et al. 1993; Koster et al. 2000).
The second part of our study (Sect. 4) focuses on the
effects of soil moisture variations on North American vegetation and wildfire occurrences.
For example, atypical early fall rains improve fall grazing and infiltration
of soil moisture before frost limits infiltration, but these same rains can impair some grain harvests and / or fall plantings.
The anomaly data are the difference between the average value
of soil moisture for each month in the period 1991 to 2016; it is also provided in units of m3m - 3.
Career - centered efforts At Vandenberg, the pioneers of the mission, such as Tom Schmugge, a retired NASA engineer who first came up with the
idea of a soil moisture mission, and other scientists who have dedicated their lives to the mission, erupted with cheers, hugs and handshakes.
The study, published today in Science, used 9
years of soil moisture data from NASA's venerable Aqua satellite along with data from a network of rain gauges.
These shifts may include rising sea levels, stronger tropical cyclones, the loss
of soil moisture under higher temperatures, more intense precipitation and flooding, more frequent droughts, the melting of glaciers and the changing seasonality of snowmelt.
-- Research shows that wheat crops benefit from a preceding legume pulse crop through the addition of soil organic matter leading to
conservation of soil moisture and the addition of nitrogen (Miller et al 2002; Miller et al 2003; Cutforth et al 2007).
Toby Ault, the lead author of the study and the atmospheric researcher explained that the risk of a mega drought depends critically on the
balance of soil moisture at the soil's surface.
Indeed, on our current emissions path, most of the South and Southwest ultimately experience twice as much loss
of soil moisture as was seen during the Dust Bowl.
Of course, it is well known that severe thunderstorms often form near a «dry line,» a kind of atmospheric front separating dry air to the west from moist air to the east; but this does not always form near the strong
gradients of soil moisture.
Models simulate the moisture in the upper few metres of the land surface in varying ways, and
evaluation of the soil moisture content is still difficult (See Section 8.2.3.2; Wang, 2005; Gao and Dirmeyer, 2006 for multi-model analyses).
Seneviratne, S. I., et al. (2013),
Impact of soil moisture - climate feedbacks on CMIP5 projections: First results from the GLACE - CMIP5 experiment, Geophys.
«What I think really stands out in the paper is the consistency between different
metrics of soil moisture and the findings across all the different climate models,» said Kevin Anchukaitis, a climate scientist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, who was not involved in the study.
Gallego - Elvira, B., C. M. Taylor, P. P. Harris, D. Ghent, K. L. Veal, and S. S. Folwell (2016), Global observational
diagnosis of soil moisture control on the land surface energy balance, Geophys.
From the
perspective of soil moisture, the ongoing drought is the worst in at least the last 1,200 years, the study found, adding that the high temperatures in the past few years may have aggravated the precipitation deficits by nearly 40 %.
By analyzing the strength of the shallow circulations, the surface budget with its effects on the boundary layer properties, and the
shape of the soil moisture resistance function, we demonstrate that the soil has to dry out significantly, for the here - tested resistance formulations below 15 % of its water availability, to be able to alter the precipitation distribution.