Assessing and Improving Land Surface Model Outputs Over Africa Using GRACE,...

Ahmed, M., mohamed sultan, E. Yan, and J. Wahr (2016), Assessing and Improving Land Surface Model Outputs Over Africa Using GRACE, Field, and Remote Sensing Data, Surv. Geophys., 37, 529-556, doi:10.1007/s10712-016-9360-8.
Abstract: 

The Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE), along with other relevant field and remote sensing datasets, was used to assess the performance of two land surface models (LSMs: CLM4.5-SP and GLDAS-Noah) over the African continent and improve the outputs of the CLM4.5-SP model. Spatial and temporal analysis of monthly (January 2003–December 2010) Terrestrial Water Storage (TWS) estimates extracted from GRACE (TWSGRACE), CLM4.5-SP (TWSCLM4.5), and GLDAS-Noah (TWSGLDAS) indicates the following: (1) compared to GRACE, LSMs overestimate TWS in winter months and underestimate them in summer months; (2) the amplitude of annual cycle (AAC) of TWSGRACE is higher than that of TWSLSM (AAC: TWSGRACE [ TWSGLDAS [ TWSCLM4.5); (3) higher, and statistically significant correlations were observed between TWSGRACE and TWSGLDAS compared to those between TWSGRACE and TWSCLM4.5; (4) differences in forcing precipitation and temperature datasets for GLDAS-Noah and CLM4.5-SP models are unlikely to be the main cause for the observed discrepancies between TWSGRACE and TWSLSM; and (5) the CLM4.5-SP model overestimates & Mohamed Sultan

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Mission: 
GRACE
Funding Sources: 
Funding was provided by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Grant NNX12AJ94G to Western Michigan University.