Using AMSR-E land product to monitor the drought process in China

This paper presents a method (drought index) to monitor the drought process in China. The method based on the relationship between drought and soil moisture change. Although the absolute value of soil moisture from AMSR-E land product is not accurate enough, but we can use the soil moisture change information in the temporal scale. The soil moisture product of AMSR-E from 2002 to present is used to build up the drought index. In each EASE-GRID grid, the smallest soil moisture value and the largest soil moisture value in the 8 years are defined to dry/wet edge points and the drought index of them are 0/100. With the two edge points, we can get drought index in each grid, each day. Using the former method, we represent 4 typical drought processes in China. Result show that the drought index from AMSR-E soil moisture product can brought out the development and distribution of drought process roughly.