Land surface coupling in regional climate simulations of the West African monsoon

Coupling of the Community Land Model (CLM3) to the ICTP Regional Climate Model (RegCM3) substantially improves the simulation of mean climate over West Africa relative to an older version of RegCM3 coupled to the Biosphere Atmosphere Transfer Scheme (BATS). Two 10-year simulations (1992–2001) show t...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Climate dynamics 2009-11, Vol.33 (6), p.869-892
Main Authors: Steiner, Allison L., Pal, Jeremy S., Rauscher, Sara A., Bell, Jason L., Diffenbaugh, Noah S., Boone, Aaron, Sloan, Lisa C., Giorgi, Filippo
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Atmosphere
Atmospheric boundary layer
Atmospheric models
Biosphere
Climate change
Climate models
Climatology
Climatology. Bioclimatology. Climate change
Earth and Environmental Science
Earth Sciences
Earth, ocean, space
Energy gradient
Evapotranspiration
Exact sciences and technology
External geophysics
Geophysics/Geodesy
Meteorology
Monsoons
Oceanography
Rain
Simulation
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Summary:Coupling of the Community Land Model (CLM3) to the ICTP Regional Climate Model (RegCM3) substantially improves the simulation of mean climate over West Africa relative to an older version of RegCM3 coupled to the Biosphere Atmosphere Transfer Scheme (BATS). Two 10-year simulations (1992–2001) show that the seasonal timing and magnitude of mean monsoon precipitation more closely match observations when the new land surface scheme is implemented. Specifically, RegCM3–CLM3 improves the timing of the monsoon advance and retreat across the Guinean Coast, and reduces a positive precipitation bias in the Sahel and Northern Africa. As a result, simulated temperatures are higher, thereby reducing the negative temperature bias found in the Guinean Coast and Sahel in RegCM3–BATS. In the RegCM3–BATS simulation, warmer temperatures in northern latitudes and wetter soils near the coast create excessively strong temperature and moist static energy gradients, which shifts the African Easterly Jet further north than observed. In the RegCM3–CLM3 simulation, the migration and position of the African Easterly Jet more closely match reanalysis winds. This improvement is triggered by drier soil conditions in the RegCM3–CLM3 simulation and an increase in evapotranspiration per unit precipitation. These results indicate that atmosphere–land surface coupling has the ability to impact regional-scale circulation and precipitation in regions exhibiting strong hydroclimatic gradients.
ISSN:0930-7575
1432-0894
DOI:10.1007/s00382-009-0543-6