Fig. 1

a Domain of the numerical experiment. Color shading represents the SM ratio between ESA-CCI and ERA-Interim (ESA-CCI divided by ERA-Interim) for the surface layer during 11–20 June 2002. The black box presents the sub-domain used for area averaging. b Initial SM condition (m³ m⁻³) at 0–10 cm for the WRF experiment initialized at 0000 UTC 13 June 2002