Abstract
Recent summers in the United States have been plagued by intense droughts that have caused significant damage to crops and have had a large impact on society. The ability to forecasts such events would allow for preparations that could help reduce the impact on society. Coupled land–atmosphere–ocean models were created to provide such forecasts but there are large uncertainties associated with their predictions. The predictive skill of these models is particularly low during the convective season due to the weaker connections with the oceans and an increase in the land–atmosphere interactions. To better understand the degradation of forecasts skill during the summer months and its connection to the land–atmosphere interactions we analyze National Centers for Environmental Prediction’s Climate Forecast System Version 2 (CFSv2) in terms of its climatological land–atmosphere interactions. To do this we use a recently developed classification of land–atmosphere interactions and other diagnostic variables to compare the reanalysis from the Climate Forecast System (CFSR) with CFSv2 re-forecasts (CFSRR) over the period 1982–2009. Coupling in the CFSRR tends toward the wet coupling regime for most areas east of the Rocky Mountains. Although the specific mechanism driving CFSRR to wet coupling state varies by region, the overall cause is enhanced vegetation rooting depth, originally implemented to address a near-surface warm bias in CFSR. The long-term tendency to wet coupling precludes the forecast model from consistently predicting and maintaining drought over the continental US.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Betts AK (2009) Land-surface–atmosphere coupling in observations and models. J Adv Model Earth Syst 1:18
Dirmeyer PA (2001) Climate drift in a coupled land–atmosphere model. J Hydrometeorol Am Meteorol Soc 2:89–100
Dirmeyer PA, Koster RD, Guo Z (2006) Do global models properly represent the feedback between land and atmosphere? J Hydrometeorol Am Meteorol Soc 7:1177–1198
Ek MB, Mitchell KE, Lin Y et al (2003) Implementation of Noah land surface model advances in the National Centers for Environmental Prediction operational mesoscale Eta model. J Geophys Res Atmospheres 108:16
Ferguson CR, Wood EF (2011) Observed land–atmosphere coupling from satellite remote sensing and reanalysis. J Hydrometeorol 12:1221–1254
Findell KL, Eltahir EAB (2003a) Atmospheric controls on soil moisture-boundary layer interactions. Part I: framework development. J Hydrometeorol 4:552–569
Findell KL, Eltahir EAB (2003b) Atmospheric controls on soil moisture-boundary layer interactions. Part II: feedbacks within the continental United States. J Hydrometeorol 4:570–583
Guo Z, Dirmeyer PA, Koster RD et al (2006) GLACE: the global land–atmosphere coupling experiment. Part II: analysis. J Hydrometeorol Am Meteorol Soc 7:611–625
Karl TR, Gleason BE, Menne MJ et al (2012) US temperature and drought: recent anomalies and trends. Eos Trans Am Geophys Union 93:473–474
Koster RD, Dirmeyer PA, Guo ZC et al (2004) Regions of strong coupling between soil moisture and precipitation. Science 305:1138–1140
Koster RD, Guo ZC, Dirmeyer PA et al (2006) GLACE: the global land–atmosphere coupling experiment. Part I: overview. J Hydrometeorol 7:590–610
Koster RD, Mahanama SPP, Yamada TJ et al (2010) Contribution of land surface initialization to subseasonal forecast skill: first results from a multi-model experiment. Geophys Res Lett 37:6
Koster RD, Mahanama SPP, Yamada TJ et al (2011) The second phase of the global land–atmosphere coupling experiment: soil moisture contributions to subseasonal forecast skill. J Hydrometeorol Am Meteorol Soc 12:805–822
Palmer TN, Anderson DLT (1994) The prospects for seasonal forecasting—a review paper. Q J Royal Meteorol Soc. Wiley 120:755–793
Quan X-W, Hoerling MP, Lyon B et al (2012) Prospects for dynamical prediction of meteorological drought. J Appl Meteorol Climatol Am Meteorol Soc 51:1238–1252
Roundy JK, Ferguson CR, Wood EF (2013) Temporal variability of land–atmosphere coupling and its implications for drought over the Southeast United States. J Hydrometeorol Am Meteorol Soc 14:622–635
Saha S, Moorthi S, Pan H-L et al (2010) The NCEP Climate Forecast System reanalysis. Bull Am Meteorol Soc Am Meteorol Soc 91:1015–1057
Saha S, Moorthi S, Wu X et al. (2013) The NCEP Climate Forecast System Version 2. J Clim (Early online release http://dx.doi.org/10.1175/JCLI-D-12-00823.1)
Santanello JA, Peters-Lidard CD, Kumar SV (2011) Diagnosing the sensitivity of local land–atmosphere coupling via the soil moisture-boundary layer interaction. J Hydrometeorol 12:766–786
Santanello JA, Peters-Lidard CD, Kennedy A, Kumar SV (2013) Diagnosing the nature of land–atmosphere coupling: a case study of dry/wet extremes in the US Southern Great plains. J Hydrometeorol Am Meteorol Soc 14:3–24
Seager R, Tzanova A, Nakamura J (2009) Drought in the Southeastern United States: causes, variability over the last millennium, and the potential for future hydroclimate change. J Clim 22:5021–5045
Taylor CM, de Jeu RAM, Guichard F, Harris PP, Dorigo WA (2012) Afternoon rain more likely over drier soils. Nature. Nature Publishing Group, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited. All Rights Reserved. 489:423–426
Wei J, Dirmeyer PA, Guo Z (2010a) How much do different land models matter for climate simulation? Part II: a decomposed view of the land–atmosphere coupling strength. J Clim Am Meteorol Soc 23:3135–3145
Wei J, Dirmeyer PA, Guo Z, Zhang L, Misra V (2010b) How much do different land models matter for climate simulation? Part I: climatology and variability. J Clim Am Meteorol Soc 23:3120–3134
Xia Y, Mitchell K, Ek M et al. (2012) Continental-scale water and energy flux analysis and validation for the North American Land Data Assimilation System project phase 2 (NLDAS-2): 1. Intercomparison and application of model products. J Geophys Res AGU 117:D03109
Yuan X, Wood EF, Roundy JK, Pan M (2013) CFSv2-based seasonal hydroclimatic forecasts over the conterminous United States. J Clim Am Meteorol Soc 26:4828–4847
Acknowledgments
J. K. Roundy was supported through NASA Earth and Space Science Fellowship NNX08AU28H (Understanding Hydrologic Sensitivity and Land–Atmosphere Coupling through Space-Based Remote Sensing) and NOAA grant NA08OAR4320915 (Ensemble Hydrologic Forecasts over the Southeast in Support of the NIDIS Pilot). C.R. Ferguson is supported by the Environmental Research and Technology Development Fund of the Ministry of the Environment of Japan through the S-10 Strategic Research Project: Comprehensive study to develop a global climate change risks management strategy, as well as the Japan Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology through the SOUSEI Program for Risk Information on Climate Change.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
This paper is a contribution to the Topical Collection on Climate Forecast System Version 2 (CFSv2). CFSv2 is a coupled global climate model and was implemented by National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) in seasonal forecasting operations in March 2011. This Topical Collection is coordinated by Jin Huang, Arun Kumar, Jim Kinter and Annarita Mariotti.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Roundy, J.K., Ferguson, C.R. & Wood, E.F. Impact of land-atmospheric coupling in CFSv2 on drought prediction. Clim Dyn 43, 421–434 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-013-1982-7
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-013-1982-7