Response of the atmospheric moisture flux to the soil moisture

The spatial variation of the atmospheric moisture flux from the Canadian Twin Otter aircraft is compared with the spatial variation of the soil moisture retrieved from the Electronically Scanned and Thinned Array Radiometer (ESTAR) on board the NASA P-3 aircraft. There are 6 days where both the Twin Otter and the ESTAR data are available in the El-Reno region. The preliminary results indicate that the spatial scale of the variation of the atmospheric moisture flux is smaller than the spatial scale of the variation of the ESTAR soil moisture. On the larger scale, the spatial variation of the atmospheric moisture flux is correlated with the spatial variation of the ESTAR soil moisture sometimes, but not all the times. During the evening transition period, the spatial variation of the atmospheric moisture flux is independent of the ESTAR soil moisture. The difference between the spatial variation of the atmospheric moisture flux and the spatial variation of the soil moisture flux are also analyzed in terms of the spatial variation of the vegetation and soil properties.