Abstract
The soil moisture memory contributes to atmospheric variability and seasonal predictability and could potentially affect the development of the South American Monsoon System. The relative importance of the local land surface feedbacks and the large-scale dynamical processes during the different phases of the monsoon are still largely unknown. We examine the impacts of land surface conditions during the mature monsoon phase with the Rossby Centre Atmospheric regional model through calculating the coupling strength between soil moisture, evapotranspiration and precipitation. Regions of high coupling strength (hotspots) are identified and analysed focusing on the link between soil moisture—evapotranspiration coupling and soil moisture—precipitation coupling, the relation between the coupling strength and seasonal predictability and the hotspots importance for extreme precipitation events. La Plata Basin and northeastern Brazil are identified as hotspots due to evapotranspiration recycling. A region within the South Atlantic Convergence Zone is identified as a hotspot of precipitation explained by moisture advection. Extreme precipitation events are repressed in parts of La Plata Basin when the link between precipitation and soil moisture is cut through using prescribed soil moisture.
Highlights
The region of this study is South America, which has a wide range of tropical and extratropical climatic conditions, with areas of radip land use change, and a population vulnerable to climatic variability
In order to initialize the regional model with the atmosphere–soil moisture in equilibrium, the soil moisture initial conditions are set to the soil moisture fields of corresponding initial date from a RCA3-E/ERA-40 integration initialized on the September 1, 1990
In regions where soil moisture does not influence on rainfall, P(W) is almost equal to P(S) and
Summary
The region of this study is South America, which has a wide range of tropical and extratropical climatic conditions, with areas of radip land use change, and a population vulnerable to climatic variability. The South American continent has contrasting geographical features, ranging from the world’s largest rain forest in Amazonia to the driest desert in northern Chile and an elevated desert in the Altiplano. The high and steep Andes Mountains rise along the Pacific coast on the west. Eastern South America is characterized by the presence of large river basins, such as the Amazon and the La Plata basins. The La Plata basin region in Southeastern South America is densely populated, with 50% of the total population and 70% of the Gross National Product of Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay, Paraguay and Bolivia
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