“…Quantifying the autocorrelated and the white components of the observation error is also required for land surface data assimilation (Crow & Van den Berg, ), which may have broad implications for improving stream flow prediction (e.g., Brocca et al., , ; Chen et al., ; Crow & Ryu, ; Koster et al., ), land surface energy flux estimation (e.g., Lu et al, ), and microwave remote sensing observability (e.g., Draper et al, ; Reichle, ; Reichle & Koster, ).…”