Article
Meteorology & Atmospheric Sciences
Liang Qiao, Zhiyan Zuo, Dong Xiao
Summary: This study evaluates global shallow and deep soil moisture in CMIP6 simulations using multiple reanalysis datasets. The multimodel ensemble mean produces generally reasonable simulations, but significant discrepancies exist at high elevations and latitudes and in extreme arid areas.
JOURNAL OF CLIMATE
(2022)
Article
Meteorology & Atmospheric Sciences
Eric Rappin, Rezaul Mahmood, Udaysankar Nair, Roger A. Pielke, William Brown, Steve Oncley, Joshua Wurman, Karen Kosiba, Aaron Kaulfus, Chris Phillips, Emilee Lachenmeier, Joseph Santanello, Edward Kim, Patricia Lawston-Parker
Summary: The passage discusses the impacts of irrigated agriculture on temperature and precipitation in the central United States, as well as the Great Plains Irrigation Experiment conducted in southeastern Nebraska. The experiment showed a clear irrigation signal during the peak growing season, affecting surface fluxes, temperature, humidity, and boundary layer dynamics.
BULLETIN OF THE AMERICAN METEOROLOGICAL SOCIETY
(2021)
Article
Environmental Sciences
Tamir Kamai, Shmuel Assouline
Summary: The study introduces a novel model to describe the evaporation process from porous media, demonstrating its reliability and predictive capabilities through validation and experiments. The model accounts for soil hydraulic properties and can be used to analyze evaporation under different conditions.
WATER RESOURCES RESEARCH
(2021)
Article
Meteorology & Atmospheric Sciences
Qinqin Kong, Matthew Huber
Summary: The study reveals the coupling relationship between soil moisture and heat stress and finds that wetter soil could potentially amplify heat stress. This is significant in improving the prediction of extreme heat stress events and informing strategies for mitigation.
JOURNAL OF CLIMATE
(2023)
Article
Environmental Sciences
Jianzhi Dong, Ruzbeh Akbar, Andrew F. Feldman, Daniel Short Gianotti, Dara Entekhabi
Summary: The surface water and energy balances can either be coupled or uncoupled depending on the evaporation regime. The transition between regimes during drydowns indicates a nonlinear change in water-energy-carbon coupling. Regions that frequently switch between these regimes are vulnerable to climate variability and change. This study identifies the tipping points and evaporation regime transitions using global soil moisture data sets and observation-based water availability indices.
WATER RESOURCES RESEARCH
(2023)
Article
Meteorology & Atmospheric Sciences
Dingwen Zeng, Xing Yuan
Summary: This study found that land-atmosphere coupling in the area south of Lake Baikal can influence drought events in Northeast China. When the region is artificially forced to be wet in simulations, it weakens surface sensible heating and leads to a cooling anomaly in the lower atmosphere, causing a weakening of anticyclonic circulation anomalies and inability to capture the severity of drought in Northeast China.
JOURNAL OF CLIMATE
(2021)
Article
Meteorology & Atmospheric Sciences
Juan Zhou, Zhiyan Zuo, Qiong He
Summary: The study examines the impact of Eurasian spring snowmelt on surface air temperature in late spring and early summer, finding that Siberian spring snowmelt has a significant influence. Increased Siberian spring snowmelt leads to higher late spring SAT and lower early summer SAT through changes in surface albedo, cloud cover, soil moisture, and sensible heat. The simulation of Eurasian spring snowmelt variability and its effects on SAT remains a challenge for climate models.
JOURNAL OF CLIMATE
(2021)
Article
Meteorology & Atmospheric Sciences
Yelin Jiang, Guiling Wang
Summary: This study proposes a new approach called the Slope approach for soil initialization to accommodate unsynchronized or even anti-phased hydrometeorological extremes. The approach creates initial conditions of a variable across a large domain based on the slopes of linear regression between the variable averaged over a small target region and at each grid point in the surrounding regions. The results show that the Slope approach produces similar spatial patterns and temporal evolutions of hydrometeorological responses to the conventional approach within the target region, but with stronger signals. The hydrometeorological responses in the surrounding regions are consistent with the spatiotemporal variability of the model climate.
JOURNAL OF ADVANCES IN MODELING EARTH SYSTEMS
(2023)
Article
Meteorology & Atmospheric Sciences
Zouxing Lin, Zhiyan Zuo, Huan Wang, Qinglong You, Dong Xiao, Kaiwen Zhang, Liang Qiao
Summary: This study investigates the role of winter soil moisture in influencing summer thermal anomalies over the Tibetan Plateau. The results show that higher (lower) winter soil moisture leads to warmer (cooler) atmospheric temperatures in the subsequent summer. This is due to the increased (decreased) atmospheric water vapor, strengthening (weakening) downward longwave radiation and atmospheric latent heat release.
JOURNAL OF CLIMATE
(2023)
Article
Meteorology & Atmospheric Sciences
Hsin Hsu, Paul A. Dirmeyer
Summary: This study examines the impact of soil moisture on latent heat flux using segmented regression and mutual information analysis. It identifies dry, transitional, and wet regimes and reveals both linear and nonlinear relationships between soil moisture and latent heat flux. The results show general consistencies in the global patterns of soil moisture-latent heat flux coupling, suggesting that only the transitional soil moisture regime determines the strength of coupling.
JOURNAL OF HYDROMETEOROLOGY
(2022)
Article
Meteorology & Atmospheric Sciences
Yajing Qi, Haishan Chen, Siguang Zhu
Summary: Land-atmosphere coupling has a significant impact on low temperature extremes during fall and winter over southern Eurasia. It explains around 70% of temperature variability, increases near-surface air temperature, and reduces the frequency of LTEs. The coupling also alters atmospheric circulation, affecting the frequency and intensity of LTEs.
JOURNAL OF GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH-ATMOSPHERES
(2023)
Article
Meteorology & Atmospheric Sciences
Julian Alberto Giles, Claudio Guillermo Menendez, Romina Carla Ruscica
Summary: Land-atmosphere interactions have significant impacts on climate variability in South America, particularly in southeastern South America (SESA) and eastern Brazil. Soil moisture variability not only affects local climate but also has nonlocal effects through changes in regional circulation. This study analyzes numerical experiments to understand how soil moisture interacts with regional climate and modulates precipitation in SESA and eastern Brazil. The findings highlight a nonlocal coupling mechanism between these two hotspots, favoring precipitation in eastern Brazil at the expense of SESA through shifts in regional circulation.
JOURNAL OF CLIMATE
(2023)
Article
Environmental Sciences
Jianhong Zhou, Kun Yang, Jianzhi Dong, Long Zhao, Huihui Feng, Mijun Zou, Hui Lu, Ronglin Tang, Yaozhi Jiang, Wade T. Crow
Summary: Imperfect land physics in land surface models (LSMs) introduce uncertainty and bias in the representation of land-atmosphere coupling (rho), which degrades the accuracy of lower atmosphere forecasts. This study investigates the potential of two remote sensing (RS)-based references for addressing LSM rho bias. Results show that calibrating LSM using ET-represented rho reference data outperforms using dT-represented rho reference data in ET and dT modeling, due to confounding impacts and uncertainties. Both ET and dT-represented rho references have the potential for diagnosing and understanding LSM rho bias.
REMOTE SENSING OF ENVIRONMENT
(2023)
Article
Environmental Sciences
Zesu Yang, Qiang Zhang, Yu Zhang, Ping Yue, Liang Zhang, Jian Zeng, Yulei Qi
Summary: As a land-atmosphere coupling hot spot, the northern China climate transition zone exhibits significant spatial and temporal variations in land-atmosphere coupling strength, which are influenced by soil moisture and air temperature.
Article
Meteorology & Atmospheric Sciences
Linyuan Sun, Xiu-Qun Yang, Lingfeng Tao
Summary: The impact of El Nino-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) on land surface variables in the Northern Hemisphere extratropics is examined using regression analysis. The results show that ENSO leads to anomalous land surface warming, reduced snow cover, and increased soil moisture in different regions. Atmospheric moisture processes, induced by changes in water vapor and precipitation, play a critical role in shaping these land surface anomalies.
JOURNAL OF CLIMATE
(2023)
Article
Meteorology & Atmospheric Sciences
Tao Tang, Xuhui Lee, Keer Zhang, Lei Cai, David M. Lawrence, Elena Shevliakova
Summary: This study examines the impact of land-use and land-cover change (LULCC) on air temperature using CMIP6 model simulations. It finds that croplands are generally warmer in the tropics and cooler in the mid-high latitudes compared to primary and secondary land. However, the surface heating potential fails to accurately predict the subgrid temperature variation for different land tile configurations under SSP5-8.5 forcing scenarios. The study proposes using the relationship between latitudinal subgrid temperature variation and surface energy redistribution factor as a benchmark for land surface parameterizations and temperature prediction.
JOURNAL OF HYDROMETEOROLOGY
(2023)
Article
Environmental Sciences
Yifan Cheng, Keith N. Musselman, Sean Swenson, David Lawrence, Joseph Hamman, Katherine Dagon, Daniel Kennedy, Andrew J. Newman
Summary: This study aims to develop a generalizable optimization methodology and workflow for the Community Terrestrial Systems Model (CTSM) in order to make complex land models more applicable in regional studies. By applying CTSM and using multi-objective optimization, improvements were made in river flow simulation accuracy while limited progress was achieved in snow simulation.
WATER RESOURCES RESEARCH
(2023)
Article
Multidisciplinary Sciences
Fangfang Yao, Ben Livneh, Balaji Rajagopalan, Jida Wang, Jean-Francois Cretaux, Yoshihide Wada, Muriel Berge-Nguyen
Summary: This study finds that over the past few decades, approximately 53% of the largest 1,972 global lakes have experienced significant declines in water volume. The volume loss in natural lakes is primarily attributed to climate warming, increasing evaporative demand, and human water consumption, while sedimentation dominates storage losses in reservoirs. It is estimated that around one-quarter of the world's population resides in a basin of a drying lake, emphasizing the importance of incorporating climate change and sedimentation impacts into sustainable water resources management.
Article
Environmental Sciences
Sanjiv Kumar, Candida F. Dewes, Matthew Newman, Yanan Duan
Summary: Adaptation planning for climate change requires a comprehensive understanding of hydroclimate variability and predictability. Using large ensemble data sets, we quantify the projected change in land hydroclimate variability and its predictability. We find that while global warming intensifies El Nino-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and its associated precipitation variability, the corresponding change in soil moisture variability is relatively small or even decreases due to the concurrent reduction in land surface memory. Regional mean state changes in land surface (soil moisture) primarily drive future drought and pluvial risks, suggesting that infrastructure planning can incorporate robust mean state changes despite uncertainties in variability projections. In regions where the ENSO signal increases, we observe a shift in the frequency of drought and pluvial events, with higher power on inter-annual time scales but less power on decadal time scales, enhancing inter-annual hydroclimate predictability.
Article
Environmental Sciences
Katherine E. Hale, Keith S. Jennings, Keith N. Musselman, Ben Livneh, Noah P. Molotch
Summary: Mountain snowpacks serve as natural water storage, but the Snow Storage Index (SSI) has shown a decrease in western North America since 1950 due to earlier snowmelt, spring rains, and reduced winter precipitation. The SSI measures the delay in water input from the timing of a melting snowpack, offering insights into hydrologic sensitivity to climate change and its implications for water resources and ecosystems.
COMMUNICATIONS EARTH & ENVIRONMENT
(2023)
Article
Environmental Sciences
Claudia Tebaldi, Michael Wehner, Ruby Leung, David Lawrence
Summary: We used six Earth system models to study changes in climate extremes under different land use change scenarios. The results show that changes in precipitation extremes are not significant, while temperature extremes show mixed results. Overall, our analysis suggests that the hypothesis to pair SSPs to RCPs in a flexible fashion is defensible, but further investigation is needed for some locations and indices.
ENVIRONMENTAL RESEARCH LETTERS
(2023)
Article
Geosciences, Multidisciplinary
Fangfang Yao, J. Toby Minear, Balaji Rajagopalan, Chao Wang, Kehan Yang, Ben Livneh
Summary: In nearly all reservoirs, storage capacity is lost due to sediment accumulation, and the sedimentation rates are poorly understood. In this study, a novel approach is proposed to estimate reservoir sedimentation rates and storage capacity losses using satellite images and water level data. The approach is validated on eight reservoirs in the United States and shows good accuracy in estimating the bathymetry and sedimentation rates.
GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH LETTERS
(2023)
Article
Meteorology & Atmospheric Sciences
Cuijuan Liao, Xingjie Lu, Yuanyuan Huang, Feng Tao, David M. Lawrence, Charles D. Koven, Keith W. Oleson, William R. Wieder, Erik Kluzek, Xiaomeng Huang, Yiqi Luo
Summary: This study introduces a new Semi-Analytical Spin-Up (SASU) method to tackle the problem of steady state initialization in global biogeochemical cycle models. The experiments at the Brazil site showed that SASU is computationally 7 times more efficient than the traditional native dynamics (ND) spin-up method and globally it is 8 times more efficient than the accelerated decomposition spin-up and 50 times more efficient than ND. In summary, SASU achieves the highest computational efficiency for spin-up compared to other methods, making computationally costly studies possible for a better understanding of biogeochemical cycling under climate change.
JOURNAL OF ADVANCES IN MODELING EARTH SYSTEMS
(2023)
Article
Meteorology & Atmospheric Sciences
Richard Seager, Mingfang Ting, Patrick Alexander, Haibo Liu, Jennifer Nakamura, Cuihua Li, Matthew Newman
Summary: The US Southwest is currently experiencing a severe drought crisis due to climate change, reduced precipitation, and changes in sea surface temperatures. The future wetness or dryness of the region will depend on the decadal variability of the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans as well as radiatively-forced changes.
NPJ CLIMATE AND ATMOSPHERIC SCIENCE
(2023)
Article
Meteorology & Atmospheric Sciences
Jiale Lou, Matthew Newman, Andrew Hoell
Summary: Using model-analog technique, we examined multi-year predictability of El Nino-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) since the late 1800s and found that ENSO exhibited notably high values of both amplitude and skill towards the end of the 19th century, and again in recent decades.
NPJ CLIMATE AND ATMOSPHERIC SCIENCE
(2023)
Article
Geosciences, Multidisciplinary
Justin M. Pflug, Yiwen Fang, Steven A. Margulis, Ben Livneh
Summary: Thresholds can be useful for interpreting environmental data, but they may vary when applied to different datasets or time periods. This study examines the impact of different spatial discretizations of snow on estimates of wolverine denning opportunities. The results show that snow thresholds are important but may not capture the full variability in snow-adapted wildlife denning opportunities.
HYDROLOGY AND EARTH SYSTEM SCIENCES
(2023)
Article
Environmental Sciences
Danny M. Leung, Jasper F. Kok, Longlei Li, Gregory S. Okin, Catherine Prigent, Martina Klose, Carlos Perez Garcia-Pando, Laurent Menut, Natalie M. Mahowald, David M. Lawrence, Marcelo Chamecki
Summary: Desert dust is a major component of the atmosphere's aerosol burden and has significant impacts on the Earth system. However, current global climate models and land-surface models struggle to accurately represent dust emission processes due to inadequate representations of soil particle sizes, surface roughness elements, and boundary-layer characteristics. In this study, we address these issues by developing improved descriptions of these factors and propose a methodology to rescale lower-resolution dust emission simulations. Our revised dust emission parameterization shows substantial improvement in simulating dust emissions in both models.
ATMOSPHERIC CHEMISTRY AND PHYSICS
(2023)
Article
Environmental Sciences
Wenfu Tang, Simone Tilmes, David M. Lawrence, Fang Li, Cenlin He, Louisa K. Emmons, Rebecca R. Buchholz, Lili Xia
Summary: This study quantifies the future changes in wildfire burned area and carbon emissions under different socio-economic and solar geoengineering scenarios. The results show that geoengineering can effectively reduce wildfire occurrence globally by decreasing surface temperature and wind speed, and increasing relative humidity and soil water content. However, it also leads to a reduction in precipitation, which partially offsets the fire reduction effect. The impact on burned area is larger than on fire carbon emissions, and the stratospheric sulfate aerosol approach has a stronger fire-reducing effect compared to the solar irradiance reduction approach.
ATMOSPHERIC CHEMISTRY AND PHYSICS
(2023)
Article
Geosciences, Multidisciplinary
Elsa S. Culler, Ben Livneh, Balaji Rajagopalan, Kristy F. Tiampo
Summary: Wildfires change hydrologic and geomorphic response, leading to additional hazards and challenges. This study evaluates the trigger characteristics of post-wildfire mass movement by comparing precipitation before events in burned and unburned locations. The results show that mass movements in burned sites are preceded by less precipitation, supporting the hypothesis that fire increases rainfall-driven mass movement hazards. Additionally, there are differences in the seasonality of mass movements between burned and unburned locations.
NATURAL HAZARDS AND EARTH SYSTEM SCIENCES
(2023)
Article
Environmental Sciences
Melanie Holland, Ben Livneh, Evan Thomas
Summary: This study develops a groundwater abstraction forecast model using in situ groundwater abstraction data, hydrologic, and climatic data. Artificial neural network models outperform other model algorithms and can reliably predict groundwater abstraction. The model performs best on a monthly time step and forecasts are reliable within a two-month lead time. Regional heterogeneity may introduce error into the model.