An evaluation of BATS as a basis for a radiobrightness model for northern prairie

Biosphere models provide estimates of energy and momentum fluxes at the land atmosphere interface. In this paper one such model, BATS, was evaluated for its sensitivity of predicted surface soil temperatures to soil moisture and its ability to predict foliage temperatures for prairie grassland given insolation, soil moisture and other weather forcings. These weather forcings and observed foliage temperatures were provided by the authors´ first Radiobrightness Energy Balance Experiment (REBEX 1). They observed that the increase in soil moisture decreased the soil temperature and the amplitude of the diurnal variation. While BATS predicted diurnal cycles for foliage temperatures that were close to observed values, it overestimated the maximum and underestimated the minimum foliage temperatures by as much as 10 K. Since the effective emissivity of prairie grass at SSM/I frequencies is generally greater than 0.95, these differences would be reflected in similar differences between predicted and observed radiobrightnesses if BATS were the basis of a radiobrightness model