Integrating land‐surface and atmospheric models

Abstract

The Project for Intercomparison of Land‐Surface Parameterization Schemes (PILPS) is a World Climate Research Programme project operating under the auspices of the Working Group on Numerical Experimentation (WGNE) and the Global Energy and Water Cycle Experiment (GEWEX). Its goal is to improve our understanding of how the modeling of land‐surface processes affects atmospheric conditions in climate and weather forecast models. PILPS will assess the range of responses of surface parameterizations to atmospheric forcing and detect the source of these differences. This effort is needed to improve the capabilities of climate and weather prediction models when surface processes strongly influence the movement of the atmosphere. Since it began in 1992 [Henderson‐Sellers et al., 1992], PILPS has initiated a number of complementary sensitivity studies designed by the land‐surface scientific community.