Abstract:To evaluate the consistency between different products, 8 datasets of soil moisture products from the multisatellite estimation data of the European Space Agency Climate Change Initiative (ECV CCI), different versions of the Global Land Data Assimilation System (GLDAS/CLM, NOAH2.7, NOAH3.3, VIC, MOSAIC) and reanalysis datasets (ERAInterim, NCEP/DOE) are compared with the observed data in mainland China in the temporal and spatial distribution during the period of 1995 to 2010. Results show that all datasets can simulate the spatial distribution of soil moisture in different regions of China. GLDASNOAH and European Centre for MediumRange Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) reanalysis data (ERAInterim) have a bias of lessthan 0.05, the rootmeansquare deviation (RMSE) less than 0.1, and the correlation coefficient morethan 0.4. All datasets perform well in the north eastern region, but they have relatively poor representation in the south, southwest and northwestern parts of China. The ERAInterim successfully captured the interannual variability of soil moisture.