Impacts of Land Surface Parameterizations on Simulations over the Arid and Semiarid Regions: The Case of the Loess Plateau in China

Abstract

Abstract The arid and semiarid areas of the Loess Plateau are extremely sensitive to climate change. Land–atmosphere interactions of these regions play an important role in the regional climate. However, most present land surface models (LSMs) are not reasonable and accurate enough to describe the surface characteristics in these regions. In this study, we investigate the effects of three key land surface parameters including surface albedo, soil thermal conductivity, and additional damping on the Noah LSM in simulating the land surface characteristics. The observational data from June to September from 2007 to 2009 collected at the Semi-Arid Climate and Environment Observatory of Lanzhou University (SACOL) station in northwest China are used to validate the Noah LSM simulations. The results suggest that the retrieved values of surface albedo, soil thermal conductivity, and additional damping based on observations are in closer agreement with those of the MULT scheme for surface albedo, the J75_NOAH scheme for soil thermal conductivity, and the Y08 scheme for additional damping, respectively. Furthermore, the model performance is not obviously affected by surface albedo parameterization schemes, while the scheme of soil thermal conductivity is vital to simulations of latent heat flux and soil temperature and the scheme of additional damping is crucial for simulating net radiation flux, sensible heat flux, and surface soil temperature. A set of optimal parameterizations is proposed for the offline Noah LSM at the SACOL station when the MULT scheme for surface albedo, the J75_NOAH scheme for soil thermal conductivity, and the Y08 scheme for additional damping are combined simultaneously, especially in the case of sensible heat flux and surface soil temperature simulations.