2011 Volume 67 Issue 4 Pages I_361-I_366
Thermal inertia is the square root of the product of volumetric heat capacity and thermal conductivity. Thermal inertia changes theoretically as the soil water content changes due to the large differences of the two parameters composing thermal inertia between dry soil and water. This study shows a method for retrieving thermal inertia from a heat budget model of the Earth surface incorporating radiative surface temperatures and meteorological data, and the retrieved thermal inertia correlated well with subsurface soil moisture. The analysis extended to difference of performance of the thermal inertia estimation according to the data frequency of surface temperature and meteorological data. Results show that data frequency corresponding to routine meteorological observations and the geostational satellite was enough to roughly discriminate thermal inertia estimates into a couple of ranks of soil moisture.
PROCEEDINGS OF HYDRAULIC ENGINEERING
