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Title: Effects of explicit convection on global land-atmosphere coupling in the superparameterized CAM

Abstract

Here, conventional global climate models are prone to producing unrealistic land-atmosphere coupling signals. Cumulus and convection parameterizations are natural culprits but the effect of bypassing them with explicitly resolved convection on global land-atmosphere coupling dynamics has not been explored systematically. We apply a suite of modern land-atmosphere coupling diagnostics to isolate the effect of cloud Superparameterization in the Community Atmosphere Model (SPCAM) v3.5, focusing on both the terrestrial segment (i.e., soil moisture and surface turbulent fluxes interaction) and atmospheric segment (i.e., surface turbulent fluxes and precipitation interaction) in the water pathway of the landatmosphere feedback loop. At daily timescales, SPCAM produces stronger uncoupled terrestrial signals (negative sign) over tropical rainforests in wet seasons, reduces the terrestrial coupling strength in the Central Great Plain in American, and reverses the coupling sign (from negative to positive) over India in the boreal summer season—all favorable improvements relative to reanalysis-forced land modeling. Analysis of the triggering feedback strength (TFS) and amplification feedback strength (AFS) shows that SPCAM favorably reproduces the observed geographic patterns of these indices over North America, with the probability of afternoon precipitation enhanced by high evaporative fraction along the eastern United States and Mexico, while conventional CAM does not capture thismore » signal. We introduce a new diagnostic called the Planetary Boundary Layer (PBL) Feedback Strength (PFS), which reveals that SPCAM exhibits a tight connection between the responses of the lifting condensation level, the PBL height, and the rainfall triggering to surface turbulent fluxes; a triggering disconnect is found in CAM.« less

Authors:
 [1];  [1]
  1. Univ. of California, Irvine, CA (United States)
Publication Date:
Research Org.:
Univ. of California, Irvine, CA (United States)
Sponsoring Org.:
USDOE Office of Science (SC), Biological and Environmental Research (BER)
OSTI Identifier:
1360137
Grant/Contract Number:  
SC0012152
Resource Type:
Accepted Manuscript
Journal Name:
Journal of Advances in Modeling Earth Systems
Additional Journal Information:
Journal Volume: 8; Journal Issue: 3; Journal ID: ISSN 1942-2466
Publisher:
American Geophysical Union (AGU)
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English
Subject:
29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY; land and atmosphere interactions; soil moisture-precipitation feedback; land-atmosphere coupling; superparameterization; cloud-resolving model; coupling index

Citation Formats

Sun, Jian, and Pritchard, Michael S. Effects of explicit convection on global land-atmosphere coupling in the superparameterized CAM. United States: N. p., 2016. Web. doi:10.1002/2016MS000689.
Sun, Jian, & Pritchard, Michael S. Effects of explicit convection on global land-atmosphere coupling in the superparameterized CAM. United States. https://doi.org/10.1002/2016MS000689
Sun, Jian, and Pritchard, Michael S. Mon . "Effects of explicit convection on global land-atmosphere coupling in the superparameterized CAM". United States. https://doi.org/10.1002/2016MS000689. https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/1360137.
@article{osti_1360137,
title = {Effects of explicit convection on global land-atmosphere coupling in the superparameterized CAM},
author = {Sun, Jian and Pritchard, Michael S.},
abstractNote = {Here, conventional global climate models are prone to producing unrealistic land-atmosphere coupling signals. Cumulus and convection parameterizations are natural culprits but the effect of bypassing them with explicitly resolved convection on global land-atmosphere coupling dynamics has not been explored systematically. We apply a suite of modern land-atmosphere coupling diagnostics to isolate the effect of cloud Superparameterization in the Community Atmosphere Model (SPCAM) v3.5, focusing on both the terrestrial segment (i.e., soil moisture and surface turbulent fluxes interaction) and atmospheric segment (i.e., surface turbulent fluxes and precipitation interaction) in the water pathway of the landatmosphere feedback loop. At daily timescales, SPCAM produces stronger uncoupled terrestrial signals (negative sign) over tropical rainforests in wet seasons, reduces the terrestrial coupling strength in the Central Great Plain in American, and reverses the coupling sign (from negative to positive) over India in the boreal summer season—all favorable improvements relative to reanalysis-forced land modeling. Analysis of the triggering feedback strength (TFS) and amplification feedback strength (AFS) shows that SPCAM favorably reproduces the observed geographic patterns of these indices over North America, with the probability of afternoon precipitation enhanced by high evaporative fraction along the eastern United States and Mexico, while conventional CAM does not capture this signal. We introduce a new diagnostic called the Planetary Boundary Layer (PBL) Feedback Strength (PFS), which reveals that SPCAM exhibits a tight connection between the responses of the lifting condensation level, the PBL height, and the rainfall triggering to surface turbulent fluxes; a triggering disconnect is found in CAM.},
doi = {10.1002/2016MS000689},
journal = {Journal of Advances in Modeling Earth Systems},
number = 3,
volume = 8,
place = {United States},
year = {Mon Jul 25 00:00:00 EDT 2016},
month = {Mon Jul 25 00:00:00 EDT 2016}
}

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