GRIB-API definition
| Name | Liquid volumetric soil moisture (non-frozen) | Abbreviation | liqvsm | Unit | m3 m-3 | paramId: | 260210 |
UERRA details
| Definition | Liquid non-frozen volumetric soil moisture on a soil layer. |
| Validity | instantaneous |
| Comment | Sea points should be set as missing values. |
SWI = (soil_moisture - wilting_point) / (field_capacity - wilting_point).
Field capacity corresponds to the maximum value that the model can sustain without precipitation for more than a few hours. The vegetated fraction of the soil evaporates at the maximum rate for soil moisture larger than field capacity and stops evaporating below the permanent wilting point, with a continuous variation between the two extremes.
All Partners are asked to provide the wilting point and the field capacity for each grid point.
Soil layers must always start from 1 (0 soil level is the surface by default which is not encoded). |
WMO GRIB2 definition
| Parameter | ||
|---|---|---|
| Discipline | 2 | land surface products |
| Parameter category | 3 | soil products |
| Parameter number | 10 | liquid volumetric soil moisture (non-frozen) |
| Level | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Type of first fixed surface | 151 | soil layerlevel** | |
| Scale factor of first fixed surface | all bits to 1 | 0 | missing |
| Scaled value of first fixed surface | 0/1/2/3/.../X-1 | n-1 for the nth soil layer number | |
| Type of second fixed surface | all bits to 1 | 151 | soil level*missing |
| Scale factor of second fixed surface | all bits to 1 | 0 | missing |
| Scaled value of second fixed surface | all bits to 1 | missing1/2/3/.../X | n for the nth soil layer |
**newly approved level type (WMO release in May 2016)