Potential of long-term satellite observations and reanalysis products for characterising soil drying: trends and drought events

Hirschi, Martin; Stradiotti, Pietro; Crezee, Bas; Dorigo, Wouter; Seneviratne, Sonia I.

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-29-397-2025

Articles | Volume 29, issue 2

https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-29-397-2025

© Author(s) 2025. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-29-397-2025

© Author(s) 2025. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 29, issue 2

Research article

|

22 Jan 2025

Research article |

| 22 Jan 2025

Potential of long-term satellite observations and reanalysis products for characterising soil drying: trends and drought events

Martin Hirschi, Pietro Stradiotti, Bas Crezee, Wouter Dorigo, and Sonia I. Seneviratne

Supplement

https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-29-397-2025-supplement

Data sets

ESA Soil Moisture Climate Change Initiative (Soil_Moisture_cci): Version 08.1 data collection Wouter Dorigo et al. http://catalogue.ceda.ac.uk/uuid/ff890589c21f4033803aa550f52c980c

ESA CCI SM RZSM Long-term Climate Record of Root-Zone Soil Moisture from merged multi-satellite observations (9.1) P. Stradiotti and W. Preimesberger https://doi.org/10.48436/v8cwj-jk556

ERA5 hourly data on single levels from 1940 to present H. Hersbach et al. https://doi.org/10.24381/cds.adbb2d47

ERA5-Land hourly data from 1950 to present J. Muñoz Sabater https://doi.org/10.24381/cds.e2161bac

MERRA-2 tavg1_2d_lnd_Nx: 2d,1-Hourly,Time-Averaged,Single-Level,Assimilation,Land Surface Diagnostics V5.12.4 GMAO https://doi.org/10.5067/RKPHT8KC1Y1T

CRU TS4.07: Climatic Research Unit (CRU) Time-Series (TS) version 4.07 of high-resolution gridded data of month-by-month variation in climate (Jan. 1901-Dec. 2022) I. C. Harris et al. https://catalogue.ceda.ac.uk/uuid/5fda109ab71947b6b7724077bf7eb753

Short summary

We investigate the potential of long-term satellite and reanalysis products for characterising soil drying by analysing their 2000–2022 soil moisture trends and their representation of agroecological drought events of this period. Soil moisture trends are globally diverse and partly contradictory between products. This also affects the products' drought-detection capacity. Based on the best-estimate products, consistent soil drying is observed over more than 40 % of the land area covered.