edu.ucar.opensky::articles:24569 UCAR/NCAR - Library OpenSky Support PO Box 3000 Boulder CO 80307-3000 opensky@ucar.edu http://opensky.ucar.edu/ homepage pointOfContact 2025-12-24T23:10:08.833912 ISO 19115-2 Geographic Information - Metadata - Part 2: Extensions for Imagery and Gridded Data ISO 19115-2:2009(E) https://n2t.org/ark:/85065/d7zs30zf Forecasts of opportunity for Northern California soil moisture 2021-07-01T00:00:00Z publication https://n2t.org/ark:/85065/d7zs30zf https://doi.org/10.3390/land10070713 Penland, C. author Fowler, Megan author Jackson, D. L. author Cifelli, R. author UCAR/NCAR - Library publisher Soil moisture anomalies underpin a number of critical hydrological phenomena with socioeconomic consequences, yet systematic studies of soil moisture predictability are limited. Here, we use a data-adaptive technique, Linear Inverse Modeling, which has proved useful as an indication of predictability in other fields, to investigate the predictability of soil moisture in northern California. This approach yields a model of soil moisture at 10 stations in the region, with results that indicate the possibility of skillful forecasts at each for lead times of 1–2 weeks. An important advantage of this model is the a priori identification of forecasts of opportunity—conditions under which the model's forecasts may be expected to have particularly high skill. Given that forecast errors (and inversely, their skill) can be estimated in advance, these findings have the potential to greatly increase the utility of soil moisture forecasts for practical applications including drought and flood forecasting. UCAR/NCAR - Library OpenSky Support PO Box 3000 Boulder CO 80307-3000 opensky@ucar.edu http://opensky.ucar.edu/ homepage pointOfContact PDF Text theme Resource Type 2016-01-01T00:00:00Z publication Copyright author(s). This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. None eng geoscientificInformation