Temporal and Spatial Variation Characteristics of Soil Moisture in Spring in the Arid Regions of Northwest China in the Past 60s years

Abstract

Soil moisture (SM) is one of the important parameters in the process of land-atmosphere interactions. The spatial-temporal distribution of SM plays a significant role in weather and climate research. In this study, based on the monthly SM datasets from GLDAS (Global Land Surface Data Assimilation System), the temporal and spatial changes of shallow SM are discussed, and the applicability of five domestic models from Coupled Model Intercomparison Project 6 (CMIP6) is also evaluated in the Northwest China. The results show that: 1) The shallow SM (0 - 10 cm) in spring in Northwest China was generally low during 1948-2015, and the low value areas were mainly located in the Tarim Basin in Xinjiang and the Gobi and desert areas in western Inner Mongolia. In most parts of Northwest China, SM had an increasing trend in spring, this implies it became wetter in recent 60 years; 2) There are larger difference between the five models for simulating SM. Except for BCC-ESM1, all the four models (including BCC-CSM2-MR, FGOALS-f3-L, FGOALS-g3, TaiESM1) can basically simulate the spatial distribution and trend of SM in spring, all the spatial correlation coefficients between the four models and GLDAS data pass the 99% significant level; 3) After multi-ensemble mean, the simulation performance can be obviously improved, the spatial correlation can reach about 0.55 in spring, the spatial trend is much closer to the GLDAS.