METEORI - Assessing the Impact of Irrigation on Land-Atmosphere Coupling and Meteorology through the Integration of Earth Observations

Context and objectives

Irrigation plays a crucial role in the terrestrial water and energy cycle by altering vegetation, soil moisture, and land surface fluxes such as evapotranspiration and sensible heat. In turn, these land changes affect the atmosphere both in terms of energy budget (e.g., a localized cooling effect) and water budget (e.g., altered humidity and regional precipitation). In METEORI, we aim to draw the human impact out of satellite data, by integrating multi-sensor earth observation data of the land surface, to account for irrigation practices in a coupled land-atmosphere system. The 3 scientific objectives are as follows. The first objective is to improve land surface estimates and turbulent fluxes over agricultural areas via satellite-based data assimilation (DA). The second objective is to assess the influence of irrigation on land-atmosphere coupling strength, and the third objective is to improve meteorological forecasts over irrigated areas and neighboring non-irrigated areas.