Abstract
Abstract. Land surface models (LSMs) that simulate water and energy exchanges at the land–atmosphere interface are a key component of Earth system models. The Tibetan Plateau (TP) drives the Asian monsoon through surface heating and thus plays a key role in regulating the climate system in the Northern Hemisphere. Therefore, it is vital to understand and represent well the land surface processes on the TP. After an early review that identified key issues in the understanding and modeling of land surface processes on the TP in 2009, much progress has been made in the last decade in developing new land surface schemes and supporting datasets. This review summarizes the major advances. (i) An enthalpy-based approach was adopted to enhance the description of cryosphere processes such as glacier and snow mass balance and soil freeze–thaw transition. (ii) Parameterization of the vertical mixing process was improved in lake models to ensure reasonable heat transfer to the deep water and to the near-surface atmosphere. (iii) New schemes were proposed for modeling water flow and heat transfer in soils accounting for the effects of vertical soil heterogeneity due to the presence of high soil organic matter content and dense vegetation roots in surface soils or gravel in soil columns. (iv) Supporting datasets of meteorological forcing and soil parameters were developed by integrating multi-source datasets including ground-based observations. Perspectives on the further improvement of land surface modeling on the TP are provided, including the continuous updating of supporting datasets, parameter estimation through assimilation of satellite observations, improvement of snow and lake processes, adoption of data-driven and artificial intelligence methods, and the development of an integrated LSM for the TP.
Highlights
Land surface models (LSMs) are a key component of Earth system models, which simulates the water and energy exchanges at the land–atmosphere interface (Dickinson et al, 2006; Hurrell et al, 2013)
The LSMs have evolved from a simple bucket model (Manabe, 1969) to more sophisticated model systems (Dai et al, 2003; Dickinson et al, 1993; Oleson et al, 2010; Sellers et al, 1986, 1996) that have incorporated many physical and physiological processes occurring in the atmosphere–snow–vegetation– soil–aquifer system
The results show that the measured frozen soil dynamics in the Tibetan Plateau (TP) are better captured in Hydrol
Summary
Land surface models (LSMs) are a key component of Earth system models, which simulates the water and energy exchanges at the land–atmosphere interface (Dickinson et al, 2006; Hurrell et al, 2013). Typical processes of the cryosphere (such as glacier, soil freeze–thaw, and snow processes), lake–air interactions, and vertical soil heterogeneity coexist and consist of the TP’s complex land surface processes that are not well represented by current LSMs. The coupled land–atmospheric numerical experiments (Gao et al, 2015; Zhao et al, 2018) demonstrate the important role of the TP’s land surface processes on affecting the simulations of atmospheric processes and variables. The coupled land–atmospheric numerical experiments (Gao et al, 2015; Zhao et al, 2018) demonstrate the important role of the TP’s land surface processes on affecting the simulations of atmospheric processes and variables These numerical experiments further highlight the necessity to improve current LSMs to better represent the TP’s complex land surface processes. Perspectives on the further improvement of land surface modeling on the TP are given (Sect. 4)
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