Cosmic Sense II
Project start: 15.03.2022
Duration: 3 Jahre
Funding: DFG
Project lead: Harald Kunstmann
Involved scientists: Joel Arnault (IMK-IFU), Benjamin Fersch (IMK-IFU)
Project partners:
University of Potsdam
University of Heidelberg
Technical University of Berlin – TUB
Helmholtz Center of Environmental Research – UFZ Leipzig
Jülich Research Center – FZJ
German Research Centre for Geosciences – GFZ
University of Innsbruck
Summary
Cosmic sense is DFG funded interdisciplinary research unit aims to investigate the exchange of water between atmosphere, hydrosphere and biosphere and their dynamic feedback mechanism. For this purpose, the research team aims to exploit the benefits of cosmic-ray neutron sensing technique to observe the soil moisture and snow water equivalent states over large integration area. The intensities of high energy particles (resulted from cosmic rays) fluctuate at the land surface due to the presence of hydrogen atoms (water content in soil and vegetation). These variations are used to relate soil moisture and snow water equivalent conditions at the land surface. The research team is motivated towards multiple research domains including detector development, numerical modelling, remote sensing, hydrological modelling and hydrogeodesy.
From the hydrological modelling perspective, the spatiotemporal distribution of soil moisture at root zone depth is vital information to understand the water and energy exchanges between land surface and atmosphere. The Hydro Modelling group at the University of Augsburg aims to integrate the cosmic-ray neutron sensing based soil moisture and snow water equivalent observations with coupled hydro-atmospheric models using data assimilation.
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