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Modulation of soil moisture–precipitation interactions over France by large scale circulation

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Abstract

How soil moisture affects precipitation is an important question—with far reaching consequences, from weather prediction to centennial climate change—, albeit a poorly understood one. In this paper, an analysis of soil moisture–precipitation interactions over France based on observations is presented. A first objective of this paper is to investigate how large scale circulation modulates soil moisture–precipitation interactions, thanks to a weather regime approach. A second objective is to study the influence of soil moisture not only on precipitation but also on the difference between precipitation and evapotranspiration. Indeed, to have a total positive soil moisture–precipitation feedback, the potential decrease in precipitation associated with drier soils should be larger than the decrease in evapotranspiration that drier soils may also cause. A potential limited impact of soil moisture on precipitation is found for some weather regimes, but its sign depends on large scale circulation. Indeed, antecedent dry soil conditions tend to lead to smaller precipitation for the negative phase of the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) regime but to larger precipitation for the Atlantic Low regime. This differential response of precipitation to soil moisture anomalies depending on large scale circulation is traced back to different responses of atmospheric stability. For all circulation regimes, dry soils tend to increase the lifted condensation level, which is unfavorable to precipitation. But for the negative phase of the NAO, low soil moisture tends to lead to an increase of atmospheric stability while it tends to lead to a decrease of stability for Atlantic Low. Even if the impact of soil moisture anomalies varies depending on large scale circulation (it is larger for Atlantic low and the positive phase of the NAO), dry soils always lead to a decrease in evapotranspiration. As the absolute effect of antecedent soil moisture on evapotranspiration is always much larger than its effects on precipitation, for all circulation regimes dry soil anomalies subsequently lead to positive precipitation minus evapotranspiration anomalies i.e. the total soil moisture feedback is found to be negative. This negative feedback is stronger for the Atlantic Low and the positive phase of the NAO regimes.

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Abbreviations

NAO:

North Atlantic Oscillation

SWI:

Soil Wetness Index

LCL:

Lifted Condensation Level

TTI:

Total Totals Index

VTI:

Vertical Totals Index

CTI:

Cross Totals Index

Ta500:

Air temperature at 500 hPa

Ta850:

Air temperature at 850 hPa

Td850:

Dew point temperature at 850 hPa

Tas:

Air temperature at surface

Tds:

Dew point temperature at surface

MP:

Mean daily precipitation over France

IP:

Daily proportion of grid points over France with precipitation greater than the local 9th decile

NP:

Daily proportion of grid points over France with no precipitation

P–E:

Precipitation minus evapotranspiration

DSWI(t):

Difference of SWI between days t + 1 and t − 1

X_low :

Group of days for which the variable X averaged over France is smaller than the 3rd decile of X

X_high :

Group of days for which the variable X averaged over France is greater than the 7th decile of X

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Acknowledgments

NCEP Reanalysis data are provided by the NOAA/OAR/ESRL PSD, Boulder, Colorado, USA, from their Web site at http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/. The author would like to thank Christophe Cassou, Laurent Terray and Eric Martin for useful discussions about this work and Météo France (Direction de la climatologie and CNRM/GAME) for providing the SAFRAN-ISBA-MODCOU data. This work has been partially supported by French National Research Agency (ANR) in the framework of its JCJC program (ECHO, decision N° ANR 2011 JS56 014 01).

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  1. URA1875 CNRS/CERFACS, Toulouse, France

    Julien Boé

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  1. Julien Boé
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Correspondence to Julien Boé.

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Boé, J. Modulation of soil moisture–precipitation interactions over France by large scale circulation. Clim Dyn 40, 875–892 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-012-1380-6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-012-1380-6

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