Evaluation of Regional-Seale Soil Moisture-Surface Flux Dynamics in Earth System Models Based On satellite Observations of Land Surface Temperature
Knowledge Area
Ecologíal; Tecnologías del Medio AmbienteSponsors
This research was funded under the U.K. NERC e-stress project (NE/K015990/1). Additional support was provided by IMPALA (NE/M017230/1) and European Commission grant agreement 282673 (EMBRACE), and through U.K. NERC support of the National Centre for Earth Observation. Observational data used in the study are available from http://reverb.echo.nasa.gov/(MODIS), http://due.esrin.esa.int/(ERA-Interim), http://disc.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov (TRMM), http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/(CMORPH), and http://chrs.web.uci.edu/(PERSIANN).Model data are available from http://pcmdi9.llnl.gov/(CMIP5) and http://www.embrace-project.eu (EMBRACE). We gratefully acknowledge the providers of climate model data in the CMIP5 archive and EMBRACE partners, in particular, Gill Martin from Met Office (United Kingdom), Frederique Cheruy from LMD (France), and Klaus Wyser from SMHI (Sweden), for providing outputs from additional simulations. The code and aggregated observations are available from GitHub website (https://github.com/ppharris/dry_spell_rwr).Realizado en/con
Universidad Politécnica de Cartagena; Universidad de LeicesterPublication date
2019-05-29Publisher
AMER GEOPHYSICAL UNIONBibliographic Citation
Gallego‐Elvira, B., Taylor, C. M., Harris, P. P., & Ghent, D. (2019). Evaluation of regional‐scale soil moisture‐surface flux dynamics in Earth system models based on satellite observations of land surface temperature. Geophysical Research Letters, 46, 5480–5488. https://doi.org/ 10.1029/2019GL082962Peer review
SiKeywords
Climate model evaluationDry spells
Evapotranspiration dynamics
Satellite observations
CMIP5
AMIP
Abstract
There is a lack of high-quality global observations to evaluate soil drying impacts on surface fluxes in Earth system models (ESMs). Here we use a novel diagnostic based on the observed warming of the land relative to the atmosphere during dry spells (relative warming rate, RWR) to assess ESMs. The ESMs show that RWR is well correlated with changes in the partition of surface energy between sensible and latent heat across dry spells. Therefore, comparisons between observed and simulated RWR reveal where models are unable to capture a realistic soil moisture-heat flux relationship. The results show that in general, models simulate dry spell ET dynamics well in arid zones while decreases in evaporative fraction appear excessive in some models in continental climate zones. Our approach can help guide land model development in aspects that are key in simulating extreme events like heat waves.
Plain Language Summary We present a methodology to assess how land evapotranspiration (ET) responds ...
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