Dr. Thomas Holmes is a Research Scientist in the Hydrological Sciences Lab at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD. His research interests center on the utilization of satellite data for the study of the global hydrological cycle, in particular in terms of evaporation and soil moisture. He has been involved in the development of several research models and global satellite products, including the land parameter retrieval model (LPRM) for soil moisture retrieval, the community microwave emission model (CMEM) for the modeling of L-band brightness temperature, and the observation-based global land evaporation methodology (GLEAM). Dr. Holmes received his M.Sc. in Eco-Hydrology and Ph.D. in Earth science from VU University Amsterdam, the Netherlands.
The application of all-weather microwave-based land surface temperature products for energy balance studies.
Biomass as a dynamic reservoir of water within the hydrological cycle.
Drought monitoring and Food Security
Microwave Land Surface Temperature for all-weather Evapotranspiration estimates.
Thermal Science and Sensors Strategy Group lead
Nyquist Imaging Radiometer for K- to W-band
Consumptive water use for Upper Colorado
5/2016
-
Present
Research Physical Scientist
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center,
Greenbelt, MD
5/2014
-
5/2016
Senior Research Scientist
SSAI (at USDA HRSL),
Beltsville, MD
4/2009
-
4/2014
Research Physical Scientist
USDA ARS Hydrology and Remote Sensing Lab,
Beltsville, MD
6/2008
-
12/2008
Post-doctoral researcher
VU University Amsterdam,
Amsterdam
Ph.D, VU University Amsterdam, Amsterdam, the Netherlands, 2008.
MSc. VU University Amsterdam, Amsterdam, the Netherlands, 2004.
1. 2018 Hydrosphere, Biosphere and Geophysics Peer Award for Best Science Monthly Highlight
2. 2018 Hydrosphere, Biosphere and Geophysics Peer Award for Scientific Achievement
Refereed
Ahmad, S. K., S. V. Kumar, T. M. Lahmers, et al. 2022. "Flash Drought Onset and Development Mechanisms Captured with Soil Moisture and Vegetation Data Assimilation."
Water Resources Research,
[10.1029/2022wr032894]
Jennings, D. E., M. D. Jhabvala, C. J. Tucker, et al. 2022. "Compact thermal imager: a flight demonstration of infrared technology for Earth observations."
Applied Optics,
61
(14):
4215
[10.1364/ao.450442]
Wu, D. L., D. E. Jennings, K.-K. Choi, et al. 2021. "Compact Thermal Imager (CTI) for Atmospheric Remote Sensing."
Remote Sensing,
13
(22):
4578
[10.3390/rs13224578]
Cawse-Nicholson, K., P. A. Townsend, D. Schimel, et al. 2021. "NASA's surface biology and geology designated observable: A perspective on surface imaging algorithms."
Remote Sensing of Environment,
257:
112349
[10.1016/j.rse.2021.112349]
Kumar, S. V., T. Holmes, N. Andela, et al. 2020. "The 2019‐2020 Australian drought and bushfires altered the partitioning of hydrological fluxes."
Geophysical Research Letters,
48
(1):
[10.1029/2020gl091411]
Dong, J., P. A. Dirmeyer, F. Lei, et al. 2020. "Soil Evaporation Stress Determines Soil Moisture‐Evapotranspiration Coupling Strength in Land Surface Modeling."
Geophysical Research Letters,
47
(21):
[10.1029/2020gl090391]
Kumar, S. V., T. R. Holmes, R. Bindlish, R. de Jeu, and C. Peters-Lidard. 2020. "Assimilation of vegetation optical depth retrievals from passive microwave radiometry."
Hydrology and Earth System Sciences,
24
(7):
3431-3450
[10.5194/hess-24-3431-2020]
Jung, H. C., A. Getirana, K. R. Arsenault, T. R. Holmes, and A. McNally. 2019. "Uncertainties in Evapotranspiration Estimates over West Africa."
Remote Sensing,
11
(8):
892
[10.3390/rs11080892]
Schollaert Uz, S., A. C. Ruane, B. N. Duncan, et al. 2019. "Earth Observations and Integrative Models in Support of Food and Water Security."
Remote Sensing in Earth Systems Sciences,
[10.1007/s41976-019-0008-6]
Joiner, J., Y. Yoshida, M. Anderson, et al. 2018. "Global relationships among traditional reflectance vegetation indices (NDVI and NDII), evapotranspiration (ET), and soil moisture variability on weekly timescales."
Remote Sensing of Environment,
219:
339-352
[10.1016/j.rse.2018.10.020]
Lei, F., W. T. Crow, T. R. Holmes, C. Hain, and M. C. Anderson. 2018. "Global Investigation of Soil Moisture and Latent Heat Flux Coupling Strength."
Water Resources Research,
54
(10):
8196-8215
[10.1029/2018wr023469]
Kumar, S. V., T. R. Holmes, D. M. Mocko, S. Wang, and C. D. Peters-Lidard. 2018. "Attribution of flux partitioning variations between land surface models over the continental U.S."
Remote Sensing,
10
(5):
751
[10.3390/rs10050751]
Holmes, T. R., C. R. Hain, W. T. Crow, M. C. Anderson, and W. P. Kustas. 2018. "Microwave implementation of two-source energy balance approach for estimating evapotranspiration."
Hydrology and Earth System Sciences,
22
(2):
1351-1369
[10.5194/hess-22-1351-2018]
Lei, F., W. T. Crow, H. Shen, et al. 2018. "Assessment of the impact of spatial heterogeneity on microwave satellite soil moisture periodic error."
Remote Sensing of Environment,
205:
85-99
[10.1016/j.rse.2017.11.002]
Holmes, T. R., C. R. Hain, M. C. Anderson, and W. T. Crow. 2016. "Cloud tolerance of remote-sensing technologies to measure land surface temperature."
Hydrology and Earth System Sciences,
20
(8):
3263-3275
[10.5194/hess-20-3263-2016]
de Nijs, A. H., R. M. Parinussa, R. A. de Jeu, J. Schellekens, and T. R. Holmes. 2015. "A Methodology to Determine Radio-Frequency Interference in AMSR2 Observations."
IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing,
53
(9):
5148-5159
[10.1109/tgrs.2015.2417653]
Parinussa, R. M., T. R. Holmes, N. Wanders, W. A. Dorigo, and R. A. de Jeu. 2015. "A Preliminary Study toward Consistent Soil Moisture from AMSR2."
Journal of Hydrometeorology,
16
(2):
932-947
[10.1175/jhm-d-13-0200.1]
Holmes, T., W. Crow, C. Hain, M. Anderson, and W. Kustas. 2015. "Diurnal temperature cycle as observed by thermal infrared and microwave radiometers."
Remote Sensing of Environment,
158:
110-125
[10.1016/j.rse.2014.10.031]
Holmes, T. R., W. T. Crow, and R. A. De Jeu. 2014. "Leveraging microwave polarization information for the calibration of a land data assimilation system."
Geophysical Research Letters,
41
(24):
8879-8886
[10.1002/2014gl061991]
de Jeu, R. A., T. R. Holmes, R. M. Parinussa, and M. Owe. 2014. "A spatially coherent global soil moisture product with improved temporal resolution."
Journal of Hydrology,
516:
284–296
[10.1016/j.jhydrol.2014.02.015]
Han, E., W. T. Crow, T. Holmes, and J. D. Bolten. 2014. "Benchmarking a Soil Moisture Data Assimilation System for Agricultural Drought Monitoring."
J. Hydrometeor.,
15
(3):
1117–1134
[10.1175/JHM-D-13-0125.1]
Mladenova, I. E., T. Jackson, E. Njoku, et al. 2014. "Remote monitoring of soil moisture using passive microwave-based techniques — Theoretical basis and overview of selected algorithms for AMSR-E."
Remote Sensing of Environment,
144:
197-213
[10.1016/j.rse.2014.01.013]
Miralles, D. G., M. J. van den Berg, J. H. Gash, et al. 2013. "El Niño–La Niña cycle and recent trends in continental evaporation."
Nature Climate Change,
4
(2):
122-126
[10.1038/nclimate2068]
Holmes, T., W. Crow, and C. Hain. 2013. "Spatial patterns in timing of the diurnal temperature cycle."
Hydrology and Earth System Sciences,
17
(10):
3695.
Holmes, T. R., T. Jackson, R. Reichle, and J. Basara. 2012. "An assessment of surface soil temperature products from numerical weather prediction models using ground-based measurements."
Water Resour. Res.,
48
(2):
W02531
[10.1029/2011WR010538]
Owe, M., R. Jeu, and T. Holmes. 2008. "Multisensor historical climatology of satellite-derived global land surface moisture."
J. Geophys. Res.,
113
(F1):
F01002
[10.1029/2007JF000769]
Non-Refereed
McCabe, M. F., D. G. Miralles, T. R. Holmes, and J. B. Fisher. 2019. "Advances in the Remote Sensing of Terrestrial Evaporation."
Remote Sensing
11
(9):
1138
[10.3390/rs11091138]
Invited
Global mapping of Evaporation in the presence of clouds
4
/
26
/
2018
Spring seminar series, Department of Earth and Ocean Sciences, University of South Carolina
Other
A growing role for Microwave observations in estimating Evaporation from space. AMS 2020
1
/
16
/
2020
Evaluation the application of thermal infrared and microwave surface temperature observations in the retrieval of evapotranspiration under clear sky conditions.
5
/
2018
Poster presentation during GEWEX 2018 in Canberra, CA.
Microwave based implementation of a two-source energy balance model to estimate evapotranspiration
4
/
28
/
2017
There is a need for observation-based methodologies to estimate evapotranspiration (ET) at diverse spatial domains. The ALEXI methodology (Atmosphere Land Exchange Inverse) is a time difference implementation of the two-source energy balance method and provides diagnostic estimates of actual ET. ALEXI has been implemented with thermal infrared (TIR) observations at diverse spatial scales to estimate crop water use, as an indicator of agricultural drought, and for the study hydrological impacts of climate variations and land-use change.
While TIR is the most direct measurement of physical land surface temperature (LST), sole reliance on TIR limits the sampling to clear skies. It also impacts the accuracy if the cloud masking fails. Passive microwave (MW) methods to estimate LST could help to overcome this limitation and provide a more cloud tolerant alternative to TIR. As a first test of the functioning of a MW-based LST within the ALEXI framework we ran two parallel implementations of ALEXI, one with TIR-LST (MODIS), and one with MW-LST (without any calibrations to accommodate MW-LST). This paper presents an analysis of the clear sky ET estimates for the years 2003-2013 and explores the level of agreement between the MW- and TIR-based ET and derived stress indices.
Refereed
Ahmad, S. K., S. V. Kumar, T. M. Lahmers, et al. 2022. "Flash Drought Onset and Development Mechanisms Captured with Soil Moisture and Vegetation Data Assimilation."
Water Resources Research
[10.1029/2022wr032894]
Jennings, D. E., M. D. Jhabvala, C. J. Tucker, et al. 2022. "Compact thermal imager: a flight demonstration of infrared technology for Earth observations."
Applied Optics
61
(14):
4215
[10.1364/ao.450442]
Wu, D. L., D. E. Jennings, K.-K. Choi, et al. 2021. "Compact Thermal Imager (CTI) for Atmospheric Remote Sensing."
Remote Sensing
13
(22):
4578
[10.3390/rs13224578]
Cawse-Nicholson, K., P. A. Townsend, D. Schimel, et al. 2021. "NASA's surface biology and geology designated observable: A perspective on surface imaging algorithms."
Remote Sensing of Environment
257
112349
[10.1016/j.rse.2021.112349]
Kumar, S. V., T. Holmes, N. Andela, et al. 2020. "The 2019‐2020 Australian drought and bushfires altered the partitioning of hydrological fluxes."
Geophysical Research Letters
48
(1):
[10.1029/2020gl091411]
Dong, J., P. A. Dirmeyer, F. Lei, et al. 2020. "Soil Evaporation Stress Determines Soil Moisture‐Evapotranspiration Coupling Strength in Land Surface Modeling."
Geophysical Research Letters
47
(21):
[10.1029/2020gl090391]
Kumar, S. V., T. R. Holmes, R. Bindlish, R. de Jeu, and C. Peters-Lidard. 2020. "Assimilation of vegetation optical depth retrievals from passive microwave radiometry."
Hydrology and Earth System Sciences
24
(7):
3431-3450
[10.5194/hess-24-3431-2020]
Jung, H. C., A. Getirana, K. R. Arsenault, T. R. Holmes, and A. McNally. 2019. "Uncertainties in Evapotranspiration Estimates over West Africa."
Remote Sensing
11
(8):
892
[10.3390/rs11080892]
Schollaert Uz, S., A. C. Ruane, B. N. Duncan, et al. 2019. "Earth Observations and Integrative Models in Support of Food and Water Security."
Remote Sensing in Earth Systems Sciences
[10.1007/s41976-019-0008-6]
Joiner, J., Y. Yoshida, M. Anderson, et al. 2018. "Global relationships among traditional reflectance vegetation indices (NDVI and NDII), evapotranspiration (ET), and soil moisture variability on weekly timescales."
Remote Sensing of Environment
219
339-352
[10.1016/j.rse.2018.10.020]
Lei, F., W. T. Crow, T. R. Holmes, C. Hain, and M. C. Anderson. 2018. "Global Investigation of Soil Moisture and Latent Heat Flux Coupling Strength."
Water Resources Research
54
(10):
8196-8215
[10.1029/2018wr023469]
Kumar, S. V., T. R. Holmes, D. M. Mocko, S. Wang, and C. D. Peters-Lidard. 2018. "Attribution of flux partitioning variations between land surface models over the continental U.S."
Remote Sensing
10
(5):
751
[10.3390/rs10050751]
Holmes, T. R., C. R. Hain, W. T. Crow, M. C. Anderson, and W. P. Kustas. 2018. "Microwave implementation of two-source energy balance approach for estimating evapotranspiration."
Hydrology and Earth System Sciences
22
(2):
1351-1369
[10.5194/hess-22-1351-2018]
Lei, F., W. T. Crow, H. Shen, et al. 2018. "Assessment of the impact of spatial heterogeneity on microwave satellite soil moisture periodic error."
Remote Sensing of Environment
205
85-99
[10.1016/j.rse.2017.11.002]
Holmes, T. R., C. R. Hain, M. C. Anderson, and W. T. Crow. 2016. "Cloud tolerance of remote-sensing technologies to measure land surface temperature."
Hydrology and Earth System Sciences
20
(8):
3263-3275
[10.5194/hess-20-3263-2016]
de Nijs, A. H., R. M. Parinussa, R. A. de Jeu, J. Schellekens, and T. R. Holmes. 2015. "A Methodology to Determine Radio-Frequency Interference in AMSR2 Observations."
IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing
53
(9):
5148-5159
[10.1109/tgrs.2015.2417653]
Parinussa, R. M., T. R. Holmes, N. Wanders, W. A. Dorigo, and R. A. de Jeu. 2015. "A Preliminary Study toward Consistent Soil Moisture from AMSR2."
Journal of Hydrometeorology
16
(2):
932-947
[10.1175/jhm-d-13-0200.1]
Holmes, T., W. Crow, C. Hain, M. Anderson, and W. Kustas. 2015. "Diurnal temperature cycle as observed by thermal infrared and microwave radiometers."
Remote Sensing of Environment
158
110-125
[10.1016/j.rse.2014.10.031]
Holmes, T. R., W. T. Crow, and R. A. De Jeu. 2014. "Leveraging microwave polarization information for the calibration of a land data assimilation system."
Geophysical Research Letters
41
(24):
8879-8886
[10.1002/2014gl061991]
de Jeu, R. A., T. R. Holmes, R. M. Parinussa, and M. Owe. 2014. "A spatially coherent global soil moisture product with improved temporal resolution."
Journal of Hydrology
516
284–296
[10.1016/j.jhydrol.2014.02.015]
Han, E., W. T. Crow, T. Holmes, and J. D. Bolten. 2014. "Benchmarking a Soil Moisture Data Assimilation System for Agricultural Drought Monitoring."
J. Hydrometeor.
15
(3):
1117–1134
[10.1175/JHM-D-13-0125.1]
Mladenova, I. E., T. Jackson, E. Njoku, et al. 2014. "Remote monitoring of soil moisture using passive microwave-based techniques — Theoretical basis and overview of selected algorithms for AMSR-E."
Remote Sensing of Environment
144
197-213
[10.1016/j.rse.2014.01.013]
Miralles, D. G., M. J. van den Berg, J. H. Gash, et al. 2013. "El Niño–La Niña cycle and recent trends in continental evaporation."
Nature Climate Change
4
(2):
122-126
[10.1038/nclimate2068]
Holmes, T., W. Crow, and C. Hain. 2013. "Spatial patterns in timing of the diurnal temperature cycle."
Hydrology and Earth System Sciences
17
(10):
3695
Holmes, T. R., T. Jackson, R. Reichle, and J. Basara. 2012. "An assessment of surface soil temperature products from numerical weather prediction models using ground-based measurements."
Water Resour. Res.
48
(2):
W02531
[10.1029/2011WR010538]
Owe, M., R. Jeu, and T. Holmes. 2008. "Multisensor historical climatology of satellite-derived global land surface moisture."
J. Geophys. Res.
113
(F1):
F01002
[10.1029/2007JF000769]
Non-Refereed
McCabe, M. F., D. G. Miralles, T. R. Holmes, and J. B. Fisher. 2019. "Advances in the Remote Sensing of Terrestrial Evaporation."
Remote Sensing
11
(9):
1138
[10.3390/rs11091138]
