Evaluation of soil moisture from CCAM-CABLE simulation, satellite based models estimates and satellite observations: Skukuza and Malopeni flux towers regional case study

Abstract. Reliable estimates of daily, monthly and seasonal soil moisture are useful in a variety of disciplines. The availability of continuous in situ soil moisture observation records in Southern Africa barely exists. In this regard, process based simulation model outputs turns out to be a valuable source of climate information, which is needed for guiding farming practises and policy interventions at various spatio-temporal scales. Despite their ability to yield historic and future projections of climatic conditions, simulation model outputs often reflect a certain degree of systematic uncertainty hence it is very important to evaluate their representativeness of spatial and temporal patterns against observations. To this effect, this study presents an evaluation of soil moisture outputs from a simulation and satellite data based soil moisture products. The simulation model consists of a global circulation model known as the conformal-cubic atmospheric model (CCAM), coupled to the CSIRO Atmosphere Biosphere Land Exchange model (CABLE). The satellite based soil moisture products include; satellite observations from the European space agency (ESA) and satellite observation based model estimates from the Global Land Evaporation Amsterdam model (GLEAM). The evaluation is done for both the surface (0–10 cm) and root zone (10–100 cm) using in situ soil moisture measurements collected from two savanna sites, located in the Kruger National Park, South Africa. For the two chosen sites with different soil types and vegetation cover, the evaluation considers soil moisture time series aggregated to a monthly time scale from all the data sources. In order to reflect the inter-comparability of CCAM-CABLE simulation output, and GLEAM model estimates, a qualitative analysis of phase agreement, using wavelet analysis is presented. The onset and offset of the wet period, for the two specific sites, is calculated for each of the models and the soil moisture time series covariance between CCAM-CABLE and the GLEAM is discussed. Our results indicate that both the simulation and satellite observation based model outputs are generally consistent with the in situ soil moisture observations at the two study sites, especially at the surface. CCAM-CABLE and GLEAM inter-comparison also shows that the models are generally in phase, however with a time lag of about 12 and 20 days on average, for the surface and root zone respectively. In general the simulation compare well with the GLEAM model estimates, hence indicating that the key physical processes that drive soil moisture in CCAM-CABLE and GLEAM, at the surface and root zone, lead to an appreciable degree of mutual information. This is reinforced by a predominantly positive measure of covariance between the respective two soil moisture outputs.