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Title: A revised land surface parameterization (SiB2) for atmospheric GCMs. Part I: Model formulation

Journal Article · · Journal of Climate
;  [1]; ; ;  [2]
  1. MASA/GSFC, Greenbelt, MD (United States)
  2. Colorado State Univ., Fort Collins, CO (United States); and others

The formulation of a revised land surface parameterization for use within atmospheric general circulation models (GCMs) is presented. The model (SiB2) incorporates several significant improvements over the first version of the Simple Biosphere model (SiB) described in Sellers et al. The improvements can be summarized as follows: (1) incorporation of a realistic canopy photosynthesis-conductance model to describe the simultaneous transfer of CO{sub 2} and water vapor into and out of the vegetation, respectively; (2) use of satellite data, as described in a companion paper, Part II, to describe the vegetation phenology; (3) modification of the hydrological submodel to give better descriptions of baseflows and a more reliable calculation of interlayer exchanges within the soil profile; (4) incorporation of a {open_quotes}patchy{close_quotes} snowmelt treatment, which prevents rapid thermal and surface reflectance transitions when the area-zveraged snow cover is low and decreasing. To accommodate the changes in (1) and (2) above, the original two-layer vegetation canopy structure of SiB1 has been reduced to a single layer in SiB2. The use of satellite data in SiB2 and the performance of SiB2 when coupled to a GCM are described in the two companion papers. 68 refs., 7 figs., 4 tabs.

OSTI ID:
380992
Journal Information:
Journal of Climate, Vol. 9, Issue 4; Other Information: PBD: Apr 1996
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English