Evaluation of CLM5.0 for simulating surface energy budget and soil hydrothermal regime in permafrost regions of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau

Abstract

Surface energy budget and soil hydrothermal regime are crucial for understanding the interactions between the atmosphere and land surface. However, large uncertainties in current land surface process models exist, especially for the permafrost regions in the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau. In this study, observed soil temperature, moisture, and surface energy fluxes at four sites in permafrost regions are chosen to evaluate the performance of CLM5.0. Furthermore, the soil property data, different thermal roughness length schemes, and dry surface layer (DSL) scheme are investigated. The results show that the soil property data is important for CLM5.0. The default scheme in CLM5.0 yields large errors for surface energy fluxes. The combination of the thermal roughness length and DSL scheme significantly improved the simulation of surface energy fluxes, especially for latent heat flux. The optimization of DSL scheme significantly improved soil temperature simulation and decreased the RMSE from 1.95 °C, 2.07 °C, 2.02 °C, and 2.95 °C to 1.34 °C, 1.35 °C, 1.35 °C and 2.29 °C in TGL site, respectively. The combination of the thermal roughness length and DSL scheme performed the best in shallow soil moisture, decreasing the RMSE from 0.136 m3 m−3 to 0.049 m3 m−3 in the XDT site but slightly enhancing the errors in middle soil. The interactions between surface energy and soil hydrothermal regime also discussed. However, the thermal roughness length and the DSL schemes are highly dependent on the condition of the underlying surface. Different schemes should be selected for different regions.