Dara Entekhabi

Research Interests

Work in Dara Entekhabi’s Group spans a variety of topics in hydrology, including land-atmosphere interactions, surface water – groundwater interactions, data assimilation, and remote sensing with research covering both the areas of hydrometeorology and hydroclimatology. Recent projects have focused on land-atmosphere boundary layer estimation, remote sensing of precipitation and soil moisture, wintertime climate dynamics, designing and validating ground-based networks and urban canyon air flow.

Entekhabi is the science team leader for the NASA Soil Moisture Active/Passive (SMAP) satellite launched in 2015. SMAP is measuring soil moisture and soil freeze/thaw status using two instruments: a radar and a radiometer. The former has a higher resolution and the latter has more accuracy in measuring soil moisture. Several members of his research group are contributing to the development of the retrieval algorithms for the radar instrument, and for the flagship SMAP soil moisture product that will optimally combine radar and radiometer measurements.

Topics I investigate:

• Earth remote sensing
• Land-atmosphere interaction and boundary layer processes
• Dynamics of winter-time extra-tropical atmosphere and its predictability
• Data Assimilation: Techniques development and applications
• Land evaporation retrieval using multi-platform remotely sensed data
• Sensor network model-integration closed-loop control
• Surface water-groundwater interaction and hillslope hydrology
• Biographic Sketch