Abstract
The semi-arid regions, as climatic and ecosystem transitional zones, are the most vulnerable to global environmental change. Earlier researches indicate that the semi-arid regions are characterized by strong land-atmosphere coupling in which soil moisture is the crucial variable in land surface processes. In this paper, we investigate the sensitivity of the sensible/latent heat fluxes to soil moisture during the growing season based on the enhanced observations at Tongyu in the Jilin province of China, a reference site of international Coordinated Energy and Water Cycle Observations Project (CEOP) in the semi-arid regions, by using a sophisticated land surface model (NCAR_CLM3.0). Comparisons between the observed and simulated sensible/latent heat fluxes indicate that the soil moisture has obvious effects on the sensible/latent heat fluxes in terms of diurnal cycle and seasonal evolution. Better representation of the soil moisture could improve the model performance to a large degree. Therefore, for the purpose of simulating the land-atmosphere interaction and predicting the climate and water resource changes in semi-arid regions, it is necessary to enhance the description of the soil moisture distribution both in the way of observation and its treatment in land surface models.
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Song, Y., Guo, W. & Zhang, Y. Numerical study of impacts of soil moisture on the diurnal and seasonal cycles of sensible/latent heat fluxes over semi-arid region. Adv. Atmos. Sci. 26, 319–326 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00376-009-0319-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00376-009-0319-2