Jp2.2 Impact of Soil Moisture Initialization on Numerical Weather Forecasting over the Mississippi Delta Region

Soil moisture estimates are considered as a valuable input for various environment models including weather forecasting, water management, agriculture, and forestry applications. Generally, the network of soil moisture observations is not dense (typically only few observation points are available within each state) enough to meet the spatial resolution requirements of these applications. Therefore, several approaches were developed to generate soil moisture fields. One approach utilizes Land Surface Model (LSM) offline simulations with a prescribed atmospheric forcing to produce highresolution surface fields. The problem of adequate soil moisture initialization/specification in short-term numerical forecasting models was recognized about 10 years ago (Smith et al. 1994, Dirmeyer 1995).