Assessing the Performance of Separate Bias Kalman Filter in Correcting the Model Bias for Estimation of Soil Moisture Profiles

The performance of separate bias Kalman filter (SepKF) in correcting the model bias for the improvement of soil moisture profiles is evaluated by assimilating the near-surface soil moisture observations into a land surface model (LSM). First, an observing system simulation experiment (OSSE) is carried out, where the true soil moisture is known, two types of model bias (i.e., constant and sinusoidal) are specified, and the bias error covariance matrix is assumed to be proportional to the model forecast error covariance matrix with a ratio lambda. Second, a real assimilation experiment is carried out with measurements at a site over Northwest China. In the OSSE, the soil moisture estimation with the SepKF is improved compared with ensemble Kalman filter (EnKF) without the bias filter, because SepKF can properly correct the model bias, especially in the situation with a large model bias. However, the performance of SepKF becomes slightly worse if the constant model bias increases or temporal variability of the sinusoidal model bias becomes large. It is suggested that the ratio lambda should be increased (decreased) in order to improve the soil moisture estimation if temporal variability of the sinusoidal model bias becomes high (low). Finally, the assimilation experiment with real observations also shows that SepKF can further improve the estimation of soil moisture profiles compared with EnKF without the bias correction.