Monitoring soil moisture change in Africa over past 20 years with using passive microwave remote sensing

Abstract

Soil moisture is an essential variable of the climate system. It controls the mass and energy transfer between the land surface and atmosphere. It also involves in a number of feedbacks at various scales, and plays a major role in climate change projections. In this paper, we retrieved 20 years daily soil moisture over Africa continent from Special Sensor Microwave/Imager (SSM/I). Climate change tendency in Africa continent was discussed through analyzing the decade-average summer soil moisture. The results show that central Africa and South Africa region is getting wet, while parts of northern Africa are drying. The findings are supported by ERA-40 reanalysis data, which provides the same wetting tendency in these regions. This study revealed the high potential of remote sensing data in climate change study. © 2011 IEEE.