A new, long-term root zone soil moisture dataset for operational agricultural drought monitoring over Africa.

ABSTRACT: Quantifying root zone soil moisture (RZSM) is critical for assessing water availability to crops and identifying agricultural drought across Africa, with access to reliable and timely RZSM data essential for informed decision-making. While rainfall is frequently used to assess crop growing conditions, it alone may not reliably reflect crop water availability due to the impact of evapotranspiration on soil moisture and rainfall not always reflective of concurrent soil water content at rooting depth. To provide robust information on agricultural drought, this paper describes a new, operational RZSM dataset, called TAMSAT soil moisture (TAMSAT-SM), available from 1983-present at 0.25° spatial resolution. TAMSAT-SM is derived using the JULES land surface model, forced with TAMSAT rainfall esti

SUBMITTER: Maidment RI 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12917200 | biostudies-literature | 2026 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature