Investigating Land-Atmosphere Interactions using the North American Soil Moisture (NASM) Database

Soil moisture is an important variable in the climate system. To date, relatively little work has been done to assemble and homogenize in situ measurements of soil moisture and to utilize these measurements for investigating land-atmosphere interactions. This research addresses the critical need to develop high quality soil moisture datasets from disparate sources and to use these data to improve our understanding of climatic variability on seasonal to interannual timescales. The North American Soil Moisture Database is a harmonized and quality-controlled soil moisture dataset that is being developed to support investigations of land-atmosphere interactions, validating the accuracy of soil moisture simulations in global land surface models, and describing how soil moisture influences climate on seasonal to interannual timescales. Currently the database contains soil moisture data from >1,200 stations in the United States. The data is subjected to rigorous quality control procedures. These data will be published on a dedicated website and made available to the scientific community to support research efforts such as Decadal and Regional Climate Prediction Using Earth System Models (EaSM), the Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS) satellite recently launched by the European Space Agency and NASA's Soil Moisture Active and Passive (SMAP) mission (planned launch in 2015). The research presented here demonstrates how these data can be used to develop a better understanding of how soil moisture influences climate on seasonal to interannual timescales.