Abstract
The question of how sensitive the regional and local climates are to different land cover maps and fractions is important, as land cover affects the atmospheric circulation via its influence on heat, moisture, and momentum transfer, as well as the chemical composition of the atmosphere. In this study, we used three independent land cover data sets, GlobCover 2009, GLC2000 and ESACCI-LC, as the lower boundary of the regional climate model COSMO-CLM (Consortium for Small Scale Modeling in Climate Mode, v5.0-clm15) to perform convection-permitting regional climate simulations over the large part of Europe covering the years 1999 and 2000 at a 0.0275° horizontal resolution. We studied how the sensitivity of the impacts on regional and local climates is represented by different land cover maps and fractions, especially between warm (summer) and cold (winter) seasons. We show that the simulated regional climate is sensitive to different land cover maps and fractions. The simulated temperature and observational data are generally in good agreement, though with differences between the seasons. In comparison to winter, the summer simulations are more heterogeneous across the study region. The largest deviation is found for the alpine area (−3 to +3 °C), which might be among different reasons due to different classification systems in land cover maps and orographical aspects in the COSMO-CLM model. The leaf area index and plant cover also showed different responses based on various land cover types, especially over the area with high vegetation coverage. While relating the differences of land cover fractions and the COSMO-CLM simulation results (the leaf area index, and plant coverage) respectively, the differences in land cover fractions did not necessarily lead to corresponding bias in the simulation results. We finally provide a comparative analysis of how sensitive the simulation outputs (temperature, leaf area index, plant cover) are related to different land cover maps and fractions. The different regional representations of COSMO-CLM indicate that the soil moisture, atmospheric circulation, evaporative demand, elevation, and snow cover schemes need to be considered in the regional climate simulation with a high horizontal resolution.
Highlights
Land cover (LC, see Abbreviations) plays an important role in regional climate via influencing the heat, moisture, momentum transfer, and chemical composition of the atmosphere
Comparison of the COSMO-CLM results between three land cover sets: In this part, we focused on the differences between the output plant coverage and leaf area index (LAI) by setting
Is the simulated temperature based on three different land cover maps reasonably simulated compared to the observational data? How does the temperature react to different land cover maps and fractions in the summer and winter seasons? To evaluate the simulations and study the temperature response to different LC maps and fractions, we first calculated the mean seasonal temperature difference between the three COSMO-CLM outputs and the observational data
Summary
Land cover (LC, see Abbreviations) plays an important role in regional climate via influencing the heat, moisture, momentum transfer, and chemical composition of the atmosphere. Changes in local conditions with the underlying surface have the strongest impact on temperature due to the interplay between surface albedo and soil moisture changes and evapotranspiration efficiencies This indicates that changes in temperature response are to be expected locally, underlying the importance of the convection-permitting scale when considering land cover changes. In regions with strong land–atmosphere interactions, the differences in land cover types significantly affect weather and climate through atmospheric circulation [16,17]. A convection-permitting simulation with a higher horizontal resolution on a regional scale is needed, which allows us to investigate how sensitive the land–atmosphere interaction is with different land cover types [18]
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
