Analysis of the relationship between microwave emissivity and NDVI / MVI/soil moisture over Tibetan Plateau, China

The land microwave emissivity derived from satellite measurement is a function of surface cover structure, water content, surface roughness and the atmosphere composition. In this paper, the microwave emissivity derived by AMSR-E has been compared with the estimated soil moisture and microwave vegetation index (MVI), MODIS NDVI over Tibetan Plateau, which aims to understand the intrinsic relationship among satellite products physically. The microwave emissivities display the more consistent change with MVIs than NDVI over mixed forest cover area from time series analysis for summer and winter. While over grassland area, NDVI has the good position correlation with soil moisture, and the same to emissivity in summer time. Soil moisture derived the good negative correlation with microwave emissivity in arid and semiarid areas but poor in vegetation covered area. All of these are consistent with the expected results statistically which can provide one way to validate the microwave emissivity dataset.