Evapotranspiration monitoring with Meteosat Second Generation satellites: improvement opportunities from moderate spatial resolution satellites for vegetation

The Satellite Application Facility on Land Surface Analysis proposes a land evapotranspiration (ET) product, generated in near-real time. It is produced by an energy balance model forced by radiation components derived from data of the Spinning Enhanced Visible and Infrared Imager aboard Meteosat Second Generation geostationary satellites, at a spatial resolution of approximately 3 km at the equator and covering Europe, Africa, and South America. In this article, we assess the improvement opportunities from moderate spatial resolution satellites for ET monitoring at the Meteosat Second Generation satellite scale. Four variables, namely the land cover, the leaf area index (LAI), the surface albedo, and the open water fraction, derived from moderate-resolution satellites for vegetation monitoring are considered at two spatial resolutions, 1 km and 330 m, corresponding to the imagery provided by Satellite Pour l'Observation de la Terre (SPOT)-VEGETATION and future Project for On-Board Autonomy - Vegetation (PROBA-V) space-borne sensors. The variables are incorporated into the ET model, replacing or complementing input derived from the sensor aboard the geostationary satellite, and their relative effect on the model output is analysed. The investigated processes at small scales unresolved by the geostationary satellite are better taken into account in the final ET estimates, especially over heterogeneous and transition zones. Variables derived from sensors at 250-300 m are shown to have a noticeable effect on the ET estimates compared to the 1 km resolution, demonstrating the interest of PROBA-V 330 m-derived variables for the monitoring of ET at Meteosat Second Generation resolution. © 2014 Taylor & Francis.