Impact of real-time satellite-derived green vegetation fraction on National Water Model fluxes in humid Alabama watersheds

This study investigates the impact of assimilating real-time Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) GVF on NWM streamflow and land surface energy and moisture fluxes.

Using a subset of the NWM over three humid watersheds in Alabama, VIIRS GVF was assimilated into an experimental NWM configuration to replace the default GVF climatology to provide a more accurate representation of the land surface vegetation greenness. Although the use of real-time VIIRS GVF in place of the climatological GVF slightly improved NWM stream-flow prediction, results were not statistically significant. GVF assimilation also improved the interannual representation of land surface fluxes with increases in GVF resulting in increased evapotranspiration and latent heat.