Multiyear monitoring of soil moisture over Iran through satellite and reanalysis soil moisture products

Soil moisture (SM) plays a fundamental role for many hydrological applications including water resources, drought analysis, agriculture, and climate variability and extremes. SM is not measured in most parts of Iran and limited measurements do not meet sufficient temporal and spatial resolution. Hence, due to ease of operation, their global coverage and demonstrated accuracy, use of remote sensing SM products is almost the only way for deriving SM information in Iran. In the present research, surface SM (SSM) datasets at six subregions of Iran with different climate conditions were extracted from two satellite-based passive (SMOSL3) and active + passive (ESA CCI SM) microwave observations, and two reanalysis (ERA-Interim and ERA-Interim/Land) products. Time series of averaged monthly mean SSM products and in situ ground precipitation and temperature measurements were derived for each subregion. Results revealed that, generally, all SSM products were in good agreement with each other with correlation coefficients higher than 0.5. The better agreement was found in the Northeast and Southwest region with average correlation values equal to 0.88 and 0.91, respectively. It should be noted that the SSM datasets are characterized by different periods and lengths. Hence, results should be assessed with cautious. Moreover, most SSM products have strong correlations with maximum, minimum and average temperature as well as with total monthly precipitation. Also, trend analysis showed no trend for time series of monthly SSM over all subregions in the two periods 1980-1999 and 2000-2014. The only exceptions were the Southeast subregion for ERA-Interim and Center and Northwest subregions for the ESA CCI SM for which a negative trend was detected for the period 2000-2014. Finally, the Standardized Soil Moisture Index (SSI) calculated from ERA-Interim, ERA-I/Land and ESA CCI SM datasets showed that the Center and Southeast regions suffered from the most severe and longest-lasting drought events in the last decade.