Abstract
The surface-atmosphere turbulent exchanges couple the water, energy and carbon budgets in the Earth system. The biosphere plays an important role in the evaporation process, and vegetation related parameters such as the leaf area index (LAI), vertical root distribution and stomatal resistance are poorly constrained due to sparse observations at the spatio-temporal scales at which land surface models (LSMs) operate. In this study, we use the Carbon Hydrology Tiled European Center for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) Scheme for Surface Exchanges over Land (CHTESSEL) model and investigate the sensitivity of the simulated turbulent fluxes to these vegetation related parameters. Observed data from 17 FLUXNET towers were used to force and evaluate model simulations with different vegetation parameter configurations. The replacement of the current LAI climatology used by CHTESSEL, by a new high-resolution climatology, representative of the station’s location, has a small impact on the simulated fluxes. Instead, a revision of the root profile considering a uniform root distribution reduces the underestimation of evaporation during water stress conditions. Despite the limitations of using only one model and a limited number of stations, our results highlight the relevance of root distribution in controlling soil moisture stress, which is likely to be applicable to other LSMs.
Highlights
The water, energy, and carbon exchanges between the land surface and the atmosphere are key components of the Earth system
We focus on the impact of the representation of canopy resistance on the Qle and Qh fluxes in the European Center for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) land surface model (LSM) Carbon Hydrology Tiled ECMWF Scheme for Surface Exchanges over Land (CHTESSEL) [18,19]
This study focused on the impact of the representation of canopy resistance on the simulations of latent and sensible heat fluxes by the CHTESSEL model
Summary
The water, energy, and carbon exchanges between the land surface and the atmosphere are key components of the Earth system. These exchanges are crucial for the understanding of the Earth system’ response to the increase in greenhouse gas concentration and climate change. These fluxes provide boundary conditions to numerical weather prediction models (NWP) and earth system models (ESM). The longer time scales of some of the land surface processes [1,2], when compared with the atmosphere, are crucial for sub-seasonal to seasonal predictability [3,4,5] and to represent climate feedbacks [6,7].
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