A review of fully coupled atmosphere-hydrology simulations

Abstract

The terrestrial hydrological process is an essential but weak link in global/regional climate models. In this paper, the development status, research hotspots and trends in coupled atmosphere-hydrology simulations are identified through a bibliometric analysis, and the challenges and opportunities in this field are reviewed and summarized. Most climate models adopt the one-dimensional (vertical) land surface parameterization, which does not include a detailed description of basin-scale hydrological processes, particularly the effects of human activities on the underlying surfaces. To understand the interaction mechanism between hydrological processes and climate change, a large number of studies focused on the climate feedback effects of hydrological processes at different spatio-temporal scales, mainly through the coupling of hydrological and climate models. The improvement of the parameterization of hydrological process and the development of large-scale hydrological model in land surface process model lay a foundation for terrestrial hydrological-climate coupling simulation, based on which, the study of terrestrial hydrological-climate coupling is evolving from the traditional unidirectional coupling research to the two-way coupling study of “climate-hydrology” feedback. However, studies of fully coupled atmosphere-hydrology simulations (also called atmosphere- hydrology two-way coupling) are far from mature. The main challenges associated with these studies are: improving the potential mismatch in hydrological models and climate models; improving the stability of coupled systems; developing an effective scale conversion scheme; perfecting the parameterization scheme; evaluating parameter uncertainties; developing effective methodology for model parameter transplanting; and improving the applicability of models and high/super-resolution simulation. Solving these problems and improving simulation accuracy are directions for future hydro-climate coupling simulation research.