An Evaluation of the North American Regional Reanalysis Simulated Soil Moisture Conditions during the 2011–13 Drought Period

Abstract

ccurate and timely information on soil moisture conditions is an important component to effectively prepare for the damaging aspects of hydrological extremes. The combination of sparsely dense in situ networks and shallow observation depths of remotely sensed soil moisture conditions often force local and regional decision-makers to rely on numerical methods when assessing the current soil state. In this study, soil moisture from a commonly used, high-resolution reanalysis dataset is compared to observations from the U.S. Climate Reference Network (USCRN). The purpose of this study is to evaluate how well the North American Regional Reanalysis (NARR) captured the evolution, intensity, and spatial extent of the 2012 drought using both raw volumetric values and standardized anomalies of soil moisture. Comparisons revealed that despite a dry precipitation bias of 22% nationally, NARR had predominantly wetter 5-cm volumetric soil conditions over the growing season (April?September) than observed at USCRN sites across the contiguous United States, with differences more pronounced in drier regions. These biases were partially attributed to differences between the dominant soil characteristics assigned to the modeled grid cells and localized soil characteristics at the USCRN stations. However, NARR was able to successfully capture many aspects of the 2012 drought, including the timing, intensity, and spatial extent when using standardized soil moisture anomalies. Standardizing soil moisture conditions reduced the magnitude of systematic biases between NARR and USCRN in many regions and provided a more robust basis for utilizing modeled soil conditions in assessments of hydrological extremes.