Validation of aircraft and satellite remote sensing of brightness temperature and derived soil moisture using a hydrologic/radiobrightness model

This investigation is aimed at using a coupled hydrologic/radiobrightness model to validate remotely sensed brightness temperatures measured from aircraft and the satellite and derived moisture. The advantage of this approach is that the model can bridge the discontinuities in space and time among many observations at disparate scales and provide estimates of measurement uncertainty. This effort was focused on data generated during the Soil Moisture Experiments in 2002. Results are preliminary at this time and have served to raise numerous questions that are directing current and future research.