A frequently expressed viewpoint across the Earth science community is that global soil moisture estimates from satellite L‐band (1.4 GHz) measurements represent moisture only in a shallow surface layer (0–5 cm) and consequently are of limited value for studying global terrestrial ecosystems because plants use water from deeper rootzones. Using this argumentation, many observation‐based land surface studies avoid satellite‐observed soil moisture. Here, based on peer‐reviewed literature across several fields, we argue that such a viewpoint is overly limiting for two reasons. First, microwave soil emission depth considerations and statistical considerations of vertically correlated soil moisture information together indicate that L‐band measurements carry information about soil moisture extending below the commonly referenced 5 cm in many conditions. However, spatial variations of effective depths of representation remain uncertain. Second, in reviewing isotopic tracer field studies of plant water uptake, we find a prevalence of vegetation that primarily draws moisture from these upper soil layers. This is especially true for grasslands and croplands covering more than a third of global vegetated surfaces. Even some deeper‐rooted species (i.e., shrubs and trees) preferentially or seasonally draw water from the upper soil layers. Therefore, L‐band satellite soil moisture estimates are more relevant to global vegetation water uptake than commonly appreciated (i.e., relevant beyond only shallow soil processes like soil evaporation). Our commentary encourages the application of satellite soil moisture across a broader range of terrestrial hydrosphere and biosphere studies while urging more rigorous estimates of its effective depth of representation.

The transition of evapotranspiration between energy‐ and water‐limitation regimes also denotes a nonlinear change in surface water and energy coupling strength. The regime transitions are primarily dominated by available moisture in the soil, although other micro‐meteorological factors also play a role. Remotely sensed soil moisture is frequently used for detecting evapotranspiration regime transitions during inter storm dry downs. However, its sampling depth does not include the entire soil profile, over which water uptake is dominated by plant root distribution. We use flux tower, surface (θ_s; observations at 5 cm), and vertically integrated in situ soil moisture (; 0–50 cm) observations to address the question: Can surface soil moisture robustly identify evapotranspiration regime transitions? Results demonstrate that θ_s and θ_v are hydraulically linked and have synchronized evapotranspiration regime transitions. As such, θ_s and θ_v capture comparable statistics of evapotranspiration regime prevalence, which supports the utility of remote‐sensing θ_s for large‐scale land‐atmosphere exchange analysis.

Earth system models (ESMs) from the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 6 (CMIP6) experiment exhibit a well-known summertime warm bias in mid-latitude land regions – most notably in the central contiguous United States (CUS). The dominant source of this bias is still under debate. Using validated datasets and both coupled and off-line modeling, we find that the CUS summertime warm bias is driven by the incorrect partitioning of evapotranspiration (ET) into its canopy transpiration and soil evaporation components. Specifically, CMIP6 ESMs do not effectively use available rootzone soil moisture for summertime transpiration and instead rely excessively on shallow soil and canopy-intercepted water storage to supply ET. As such, expected summertime precipitation deficits in CUS induce a negative ET bias into CMIP6 ESMs and a corresponding positive temperature bias via local land-atmosphere coupling. This tendency potentially biases CMIP6 projections of regional water stress and summertime air temperature variability under elevated CO₂ conditions.