CONSOLIDATION: consistent climate data records of soil moisture and vegetation though data assimilation

The current wealth of microwave satellite observations and model simulations gives access to global estimates of soil moisture and vegetation. However, both sources of information are of insufficient quality to draw unequivocal conclusions about the short- to long-term variability in the water and carbon cycles over land. CONSOLIDATION will, for the first time, assimilate multiple available microwave-based soil moisture and vegetation products into a land surface model with dynamic vegetation to obtain long-term (1980 onwards), consistent, gap-free and high-resolution (0.1 degree, 3hourly) global land surface estimates and their uncertainties. The resulting climate data records of soil moisture and vegetation biomass will outperform the currently available long-term satellite-only records, because diurnal details will be included and physical constraints between soil moisture and vegetation and all other land surface variables will be ensured. The new datasets will also have better skill than global model-only estimates, which by themselves unsatisfactorily characterize the soil water - plant growth nexus. In short, the project will exploit the synergy of multiple data sources by combining them via data assimilation and by leveraging the leading expertise of two partners on land surface data assimilation (KU Leuven) and satellite-based climate data records (TU Wien).