LAUSR

Abstract The Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) mission provided monthly global estimates of the vertically integrated terrestrial water storage with about 300–400-km horizontal resolution between 2002 and 2017. Since 2009, the Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS) mission observes global L-band brightness temperatures, which are sensitive to near-surface soil moisture, with a revisit time of 1–3 days at a nominal 43-km spatial resolution. This work investigates if the multi-sensor assimilation of these observations into the Catchment land surface model can improve the estimation of 0–5 cm “surface” soil moisture, 0–100 cm “rootzone” soil moisture, and shallow (unconfined) groundwater levels. Single-sensor GRACE or SMOS assimilation and multi-sensor GRACE+SMOS assimilation experiments were performed over the continental U.S. for 6 years (July 2010–June 2016). GRACE data assimilation mostly improves estimates of shallow groundwater, whereas SMOS data assimilation mainly improves estimates of surface soil moisture. The benefits introduced by the single-sensor assimilation are merged in the multi-sensor assimilation experiment, suggesting that better and more consistent soil moisture and groundwater estimates can be achieved when multiple observation types are assimilated. Interestingly, in the multi-sensor GRACE+SMOS experiment, the water storage increments introduced by the GRACE analysis and the SMOS analysis are anti-correlated. That is, when the GRACE assimilation increments remove water from the overall profile storage, the SMOS assimilation increments add water to it, and vice versa. This anti-correlation could be caused by the SMOS analysis trying to undo the increments from the GRACE analysis.