Estimation of bare surface soil moisture using geostationary satellite data

Surface soil moisture is a key variable in computing several important variables of the land energy and water budget (albedo,hydraulic conductivity etc). At the same time,surface soil moisture affects the diurnal change of surface temperature. Meteorological satellite data have great potential for providing estimation of surface soil moisture with high temporal resolution on a daily basis. This paper compares some relationship between the parameters derived by fitting land surface temperature (LST) with its diurnal cycle model and surface soil moisture,The results showed that lag time (the difference of the time corresponding to maximum surface temperature and that to maximum solar net short-wave radiation) is most correlated to surface soil moisture.