scholarly journals Land–Atmosphere Coupling Sensitivity to GCMs Resolution: A Multimodel Assessment of Local and Remote Processes in the Sahel Hot Spot

2021 ◽  
Vol 34 (3) ◽  
pp. 967-985
Author(s):  
Omar V. Müller ◽  
Pier Luigi Vidale ◽  
Benoît Vannière ◽  
Reinhard Schiemann ◽  
Retish Senan ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Soil Moisture ◽  
High Resolution ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Hot Spot ◽  
Moisture Flux ◽  
Horizontal Wind ◽  
African Easterly Waves ◽  
Atmospheric Conditions ◽  
Easterly Waves ◽  
Duration Comparison

AbstractLand–atmosphere interactions are often interpreted as local effects, whereby the soil state drives local atmospheric conditions and feedbacks originate. However, nonlocal mechanisms can significantly modulate land–atmosphere exchanges and coupling. We make use of GCMs at different resolutions (low ~1° and high ~0.25°) to separate the two contributions to coupling: better represented local processes versus the influence of improved large-scale circulation. We use a two-legged metric, complemented by a process-based assessment of four CMIP6 GCMs. Our results show that weakening, strengthening, and relocation of coupling hot spots occur at high resolution globally. The northward expansion of the Sahel hot spot, driven by nonlocal mechanisms, is the most notable change. The African easterly jet’s horizontal wind shear is enhanced in JJA due to better resolved orography at high resolution. This effect, combined with enhanced easterly moisture flux, favors the development of African easterly waves over the Sahel. More precipitation and soil moisture recharge produce strengthening of the coupling, where evapotranspiration remains controlled by soil moisture, and weakening where evapotranspiration depends on atmospheric demand. In SON, the atmospheric influence is weaker, but soil memory helps to maintain the coupling between soil moisture and evapotranspiration and the relocation of the hot spot at high resolution. The multimodel agreement provides robust evidence that atmospheric dynamics determines the onset of land–atmosphere interactions, while the soil state modulates their duration. Comparison of precipitation, soil moisture, and evapotranspiration against satellite data reveals that the enhanced moistening at high resolution significantly reduces model biases, supporting the realism of the hot-spot relocation.

scholarly journals Resolution-Dependent Perspectives on Caribbean Hydro-Climate Change

Hydrology ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (4) ◽  
pp. 93
Author(s):  
Mark R. Jury
Keyword(s):  
Soil Moisture ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Trade Winds ◽  
Near Surface ◽  
Easterly Waves ◽  
Caribbean Islands ◽  
Diurnal Rainfall ◽  
New Perspective ◽  
Value Decomposition ◽  
Summer Time

Near-surface winds around the mountainous Caribbean islands contribute to orographic lifting and thermal diurnal rainfall that requires mesoscale analysis. Here, a new perspective is presented via high-resolution satellite and reanalysis products. Singular value decomposition is applied to 5 km cold-cloud duration satellite data to understand the leading mode of seasonal hydro-climate variability and its regional controls. The spatial loadings reflect wet islands in a dry marine climate, while temporal amplitude is modulated by the large-scale zonal circulation. When summer-time trade winds weaken, daytime confluence around Caribbean islands enlarges, gathering and lifting more moisture. In addition to the static geographic forcing, transient easterly waves impart the majority of marine rainfall between June and September. Higher resolution products capture the thermal orographic effect and reveal upward trends in island rainfall and soil moisture over the satellite era, while lower resolution products miss this effect. The climate of mountainous Caribbean islands is trending toward increased runoff and soil moisture.

Probabilistic discrimination between large-scale environments of intensifying and decaying African Easterly Waves

2010 ◽  
Vol 36 (7-8) ◽  
pp. 1379-1401 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paula A. Agudelo ◽  
Carlos D. Hoyos ◽  
Judith A. Curry ◽  
Peter J. Webster
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
African Easterly Waves ◽  
Easterly Waves

scholarly journals An Analysis of Moisture Fluxes into the Gulf of California

2009 ◽  
Vol 22 (8) ◽  
pp. 2216-2239 ◽  
Author(s):  
Man-Li C. Wu ◽  
Siegfried D. Schubert ◽  
Max J. Suarez ◽  
Norden E. Huang
Keyword(s):  
Time Scales ◽  
Time Scale ◽  
Gulf Of California ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Moisture Flux ◽  
Easterly Waves ◽  
Low Level ◽  
Moisture Fluxes ◽  
The Caribbean ◽  
The U.S

Abstract This study examines the nature of episodes of enhanced warm-season moisture flux into the Gulf of California. Both spatial structure and primary time scales of the fluxes are examined using the 40-yr ECMWF Re-Analysis data for the period 1980–2001. The analysis approach consists of a compositing technique that is keyed on the low-level moisture fluxes into the Gulf of California. The results show that the fluxes have a rich spectrum of temporal variability, with periods of enhanced transport over the gulf linked to African easterly waves on subweekly (3–8 day) time scales, the Madden–Julian oscillation (MJO) at intraseasonal time scales (20–90 day), and intermediate (10–15 day) time-scale disturbances that appear to originate primarily in the Caribbean Sea–western Atlantic Ocean. In the case of the MJO, enhanced low-level westerlies and large-scale rising motion provide an environment that favors large-scale cyclonic development near the west coast of Central America that, over the course of about 2 weeks, expands northward along the coast eventually reaching the mouth of the Gulf of California where it acts to enhance the southerly moisture flux in that region. On a larger scale, the development includes a northward shift in the eastern Pacific ITCZ, enhanced precipitation over much of Mexico and the southwestern United States, and enhanced southerly/southeasterly fluxes from the Gulf of Mexico into Mexico and the southwestern and central United States. In the case of the easterly waves, the systems that reach Mexico appear to redevelop/reorganize on the Pacific coast and then move rapidly to the northwest to contribute to the moisture flux into the Gulf of California. The most intense fluxes into the gulf on these time scales appear to be synchronized with a midlatitude short-wave trough over the U.S. West Coast and enhanced low-level southerly fluxes over the U.S. Great Plains. The intermediate (10–15 day) time-scale systems have zonal wavelengths roughly twice that of the easterly waves, and their initiation appears to be linked to an extratropical U.S. East Coast ridge and associated northeasterly winds that extend well into the Caribbean Sea during their development phase. The short (3–8 day) and, to a lesser extent, the intermediate (10–15 day) time-scale fluxes tend to be enhanced when the convectively active phase of the MJO is situated over the Americas.

Assimilating the SCATSAR-SWI with SURFEX for a high-resolution European soil moisture product

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jasmin Vural ◽  
Stefan Schneider ◽  
Bernhard Bauer-Marschallinger ◽  
Klaus Haslinger
Keyword(s):  
Soil Moisture ◽  
High Resolution ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Water Cycle ◽  
Lower Atmosphere ◽  
Surface Model ◽  
Moisture Analysis ◽  
Diffusion Scheme ◽  
Nwp Model ◽  
High Level

<p>Due to manifold land-atmosphere interactions, soil moisture is an essential part of the energy-water cycle. Especially when the incoming solar radiation is high, large effects of soil moisture onto the lower atmosphere can be expected. In addition, the knowledge of large-scale soil moisture fields is important for other applications, e.g., in hydrology and agriculture. Remotely sensed soil moisture products provide information on global scales, continuously yielding better quality as well as higher spatial and temporal resolution. The ingestion into data assimilation systems propagates the obtained information in time and – via subsequent modelling – onto other physical variables.</p><p>By the assimilation of a high-resolution soil moisture product, we aim to develop a high-level soil-moisture product for Europe and to provide an improved surface initialisation for the NWP model AROME. Our focus is on fully exploiting the high spatial resolution (1 km) of the multi-layer fused soil-moisture product SCATSAR-SWI. For assimilation, we use the surface model SURFEX, which employs a simplified Extended Kalman Filter and the multi-layer diffusion scheme ISBA-DIF. We ran the assimilation system on different resolutions and found an improvement of the forecast metrics of the 2 m temperature and 2m relative humidity using higher resolution systems. In addition, we use the water balance as a reference measure for a domain-covering verification of the soil moisture analysis.</p>

scholarly journals Decomposition of Uncertainties between Coarse MM5–Noah-Simulated and Fine ASAR-Retrieved Soil Moisture over Central Tibet

2012 ◽  
Vol 13 (6) ◽  
pp. 1925-1938 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rogier van der Velde ◽  
Mhd. Suhyb Salama ◽  
Marcel D. van Helvoirt ◽  
Zhongbo Su ◽  
Yaoming Ma
Keyword(s):  
Soil Moisture ◽  
High Resolution ◽  
Spatial Scale ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Climate Model ◽  
Mesoscale Model ◽  
The Other ◽  
Cumulative Distribution ◽  
Scale Difference ◽  
Central Tibet

Abstract Understanding the sources of uncertainty that cause deviations between simulated and satellite-observed states can facilitate optimal usage of these products via data assimilation or calibration techniques. A method is presented for separating uncertainties following from (i) scale differences between model grid and satellite footprint, (ii) residuals inherent to imperfect model and retrieval applications, and (iii) biases in the climatologies of simulations and retrievals. The method is applied to coarse (10 km) soil moisture simulations by the fifth-generation Pennsylvania State University–National Center for Atmospheric Research Mesoscale Model (MM5)–Noah regional climate model and 2.5 years of high-resolution (100 m) retrievals from the Advanced Synthetic Aperture Radar (ASAR) data collected over central Tibet. Suppression of the bias is performed via cumulative distribution function (CDF) matching. The other deviations are separated by taking the variance of the ASAR soil moisture at the coarse MM5 model grid as measure for the deviations caused by scale differences. Via decomposition of the uncertainty sources it is shown that the bias and the spatial-scale difference explain the majority (>70%) of the deviations between the two products, whereas the contribution of model–observation residuals is less than 30% on a monthly basis. Consequently, this study demonstrates that accounting for uncertainties caused by bias as well as spatial-scale difference is imperative for meaningful assimilation of high-resolution soil moisture products. On the other hand, the large uncertainties following from spatial-scale differences suggests that high-resolution soil moisture products have a potential of providing observation-based input for the subgrid spatial variability parameterizations within large-scale models.

scholarly journals A High-Resolution Dataset of Water Fluxes and States for Germany Accounting for Parametric Uncertainty

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthias Zink ◽  
Rohini Kumar ◽  
Matthias Cuntz ◽  
Luis Samaniego
Keyword(s):  
Soil Moisture ◽  
High Resolution ◽  
Groundwater Recharge ◽  
Land Surface ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Parametric Uncertainty ◽  
Model Parameters ◽  
High Resolution Data ◽  
Daily Discharge ◽  
Resolution Dataset

Abstract. Long term, high-resolution data about hydrologic fluxes and states are needed for many hydrological applications. Because continuous large-scale observations of such variables are not feasible, hydrologic or land surface models are applied to derive them. This study aims to analyze and provide a consistent high-resolution dataset of land surface variables over Germany, accounting for uncertainties caused by equifinal model parameters. The mesoscale Hydrological Model (mHM) is employed to derive an ensemble (100 members) of evapotranspiration, groundwater recharge, soil moisture and generated runoff at high spatial and temporal resolutions (4 km and daily, respectively) for the period 1951–2010. The model is cross-evaluated against the observed runoff in 222 catchments, which are not used for model calibration. The mean (standard deviation) of the ensemble median NSE estimated for these catchments is 0.68 (0.09) for daily discharge simulations. The modeled evapotranspiration and soil moisture reasonably represent the observations from eddy covariance stations. Our analysis indicates the lowest parametric uncertainty for evapotranspiration, and the largest is observed for groundwater recharge. The uncertainty of the hydrologic variables varies over the course of a year, with the exception of evapotranspiration, which remains almost constant. This study emphasizes the role of accounting for the parametric uncertainty in model-derived hydrological datasets.

Favorable monsoon environment over eastern Africa for subsequent tropical cyclogenesis of African easterly waves

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kelly M. Núñez Ocasio ◽  
Alan Brammer ◽  
Jenni L. Evans ◽  
George S. Young ◽  
Zachary L. Moon
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
West African Monsoon ◽  
Eastern Africa ◽  
Tropical Cyclogenesis ◽  
African Easterly Waves ◽  
Easterly Waves ◽  
Convective Systems ◽  
Mesoscale Convective ◽  
Vertically Aligned ◽  
Somali Jet

AbstractEastern Africa is a common region of African easterly wave (AEW) onset and AEW early-life. How the large-scale environment over east Africa relates to the likelihood of an AEW subsequently undergoing tropical cyclogenesis in a climatology has not been documented. This study addresses the following hypothesis: AEWs that undergo tropical cyclogenesis (i.e., developing AEWs) initiate and propagate under a more favorable monsoon large-scale environment over eastern Africa when compared to non-developing AEWs. Using a 21-year August-to-September (1990-2010) climatology of AEWs, differences in the large-scale environment between developers and non-developers are identified and are propose to be used as key predictors of subsequent tropical cyclone formation and could informtropical cyclogenesis prediction. TC precursors when compared to non-developing AEWs experience: an anomalously active West African Monsoon, stronger northerly flow, more intense zonal Somali jet, anomalous convergence over the Marrah Mountains (region of AEW forcing), and a more intense and elongated African easterly jet (AEJ). These large-scale conditions are linked to near-trough attributes of developing AEWs which favor more moisture ingestion, vertically aligned circulation, a stronger initial 850-hPa vortex, deeper wave pouch, and arguably more AEW and Mesoscale convective systems interactions. AEWs that initiate over eastern Africa and cross the west coast of Africa are more likely to undergo tropical cyclogenesis than those initiating over central or west Africa. Developing AEWs are more likely to be southern-track AEWs than non-developing AEWs.

The synergistic use of Sentinel SAR and optical remote sensing for mapping high-resolution soil moisture

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jianxiu Qiu
Keyword(s):  
Remote Sensing ◽  
Soil Moisture ◽  
High Resolution ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Vegetation Index ◽  
Estimation Accuracy ◽  
Landsat 8 ◽  
Optical Remote Sensing ◽  
Biological Variables ◽  
Research Activities

<p>The launch of series of Sentinel constellations has provided data continuity of ERS, Envisat, and SPOT-like observations, in order to meet various observational needs for spatially explicit physical, biogeophysical, and biological variables of the ocean, cryosphere, and land research activities. The synergistic use of this publicly-accessible SAR images and temporally collocated optical remote sensing datasets has provided great potential for estimating high-resolution soil moisture information. In this study, advanced integral equation model (AIEM) which simulates the backscattering coefficient of bare soil and the Water-Cloud Model (WCM) accounting for the scattering effect from vegetation, are coupled to map high-resolution soil moisture. Validation conducted in large-scale campaign of Heihe Watershed Allied Telemetry Experimental Research (HiWATER-MUSOEXE) in northwest of China showed RMSE of 0.04~0.071 m3m3. In addition, the accuracies in describing vegetation contribution from backscatter coefficient were intercompared between different models including WCM and ratio vegetation model. Sensitivity analysis of soil moisture estimation accuracy to vegetation index also extends to different optical remote sensing data sets including Sentinel-2, Landsat 8 and MODIS.</p>

scholarly journals Investigating the Factors That Contribute to African Easterly Wave Intensity Forecast Uncertainty in the ECMWF Ensemble Prediction System

2019 ◽  
Vol 147 (5) ◽  
pp. 1679-1698
Author(s):  
Travis J. Elless ◽  
Ryan D. Torn
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
Ensemble Prediction ◽  
Prediction System ◽  
African Easterly Waves ◽  
Ensemble Prediction System ◽  
Easterly Waves ◽  
Convectively Coupled Equatorial Waves ◽  
Easterly Wave ◽  
Equatorial Wave ◽  
Diabatic Processes

Abstract Although there have been numerous studies documenting the processes/environments that lead to the intensification of African easterly waves (AEWs), only a few of these studies investigated the effect of those processes or the environment on the predictability of AEWs. Here, the large-scale modulation of AEW intensity predictability is evaluated using the 51-member ECMWF ensemble prediction system (EPS) during an active AEW period (July–September 2011–13). Forecasts are stratified based on the 72-h AEW intensity standard deviation (SD) to evaluate hypotheses for how different processes contribute to large forecast SD. While large and small SD forecasts are associated with similar baroclinic and barotropic energy conversions, forecasts with large SD are characterized by higher relative humidity values downstream of the AEW trough. These areas of higher humidity are also associated with higher precipitation and precipitation SD, suggesting that uncertainty associated with diabatic processes could be linked with large AEW intensity SD. Although water vapor is a strong function of longitude and phase of convectively coupled equatorial waves, the cases with large and small SD are characterized by similar longitude and wave phase, suggesting that AEWs occurring in certain locations or convectively coupled equatorial wave phases are not more or less predictable.

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