Semi‐Coupling of a Field‐Scale Resolving Land‐Surface Model and WRF‐LES to Investigate the Influence of Land‐Surface Heterogeneity on Cloud Development

Simon, Jason; Bragg, Andrew D.; Dirmeyer, Paul A.; Chaney, Nathaniel W.

doi:10.1029/2021ms002602

Cited by 25 publications

(70 citation statements)

References 93 publications

(135 reference statements)

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“…While in others, like Simon et al. (2021), land surface variation scales promoted an increase in turbulent kinetic energy convection and rainfall. In similar respects, Cheng et al.…”

Section: A Scale For All Silosmentioning

confidence: 89%

Scaling Land‐Atmosphere Interactions: Special or Fundamental?

et al. 2022

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Viewed from billions of kilometers away in space, Earth appears as a single "Pale Blue Dot," in the immortalized phrase of Carl Sagan bestowed upon the image taken by the Voyager 1 space probe. Coming closer, though, a sharper image emerges (Figure 1).One finds structure to that dot, shades of green and brown continents, a dark ocean, a bright cryosphere, and a hazy, thin blue atmosphere. Zooming further in, those components break into patterns of mountains and rivers, seas and bays, forests and grasslands, layers, and cloud decks. And getting closer, one finds each component has oscillations and variations of branches and rivulets, canyons and plateaus, currents and coastlines. These objects keep revealing more structure in finer, often self-similar form, like Mandelbrot's fractals, down to eddies and organisms, and further into leaves, cells, enzymes, molecules, and atoms.And then, if you wait seconds, days, decades, or eons, landscape patterns change. Bigger things typically take longer than smaller ones. As a result, the pattern changes-sometimes occurring slowly and subtly, ebbing and flowing in an oscillatory manner, or they can occur quickly and abruptly, morphing into a new state of order.Each element and its dynamics come with variations in space and time that can be encompassed by the concept of scale. Earth systems science is preoccupied with the interactions of these elements, which cannot be understood without a stipulation of the scales of interest (Ge et al., 2019). The most straightforward of these interactions are ones where common processes at all scales can be defined by a single relationship, often a power-law, leading to the concept of scale invariance (Paleri et al., 2022). The most interesting interactions are the ones that break those rules and lead to "upscale" and "downscale" behavior, whereby processes at one scale determine the shape and function of another scale. These are most common at the intersections of biology, hydrology, geology, and meteorology, often within what is termed the "critical zone." This interlocking also harkens to the origins of

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“…While in others, like Simon et al. (2021), land surface variation scales promoted an increase in turbulent kinetic energy convection and rainfall. In similar respects, Cheng et al.…”

Section: A Scale For All Silosmentioning

confidence: 89%

Scaling Land‐Atmosphere Interactions: Special or Fundamental?

et al. 2022

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“…Secondary Circulations: Differential heating of adjacent land cover patches can generate sea‐breeze‐like secondary circulations and induce mesoscale wind convergence, which affects the structure of planetary boundary layer (PBL) and promotes ShCu formation (Avissar & Liu, 1996; Avissar & Schmidt, 1998; Garcia‐Carreras et al., 2010, 2011; Heinze et al., 2017; J. M. Lee et al., 2019; Pielke, 2001; Segal et al., 1988; Simon et al., 2021; Weaver & Avissar, 2001).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Several mechanisms were proposed to explain the cloud occurrence preference over different land cover types: Mean‐State Difference: The difference in albedo, surface roughness, soil moisture content, and leaf area index among land covers (Bastable et al., 1993) leads to spatial variances in land surface energy budget and partitioning between the sensible and latent turbulent heating, thus impacts the evolution of atmospheric boundary layer and cloud formation (Betts, 2000). Secondary Circulations: Differential heating of adjacent land cover patches can generate sea‐breeze‐like secondary circulations and induce mesoscale wind convergence, which affects the structure of planetary boundary layer (PBL) and promotes ShCu formation (Avissar & Liu, 1996; Avissar & Schmidt, 1998; Garcia‐Carreras et al., 2010, 2011; Heinze et al., 2017; J. M. Lee et al., 2019; Pielke, 2001; Segal et al., 1988; Simon et al., 2021; Weaver & Avissar, 2001). …”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

How Does Land Cover and Its Heterogeneity Length Scales Affect the Formation of Summertime Shallow Cumulus Clouds in Observations From the US Southern Great Plains?

Tian

Zhang

Klein

et al. 2022

Geophysical Research Letters

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This study investigates the effects of heterogeneous land covers on shallow cumulus (ShCu) clouds at the US Southern Great Plains using high‐resolution satellite and land cover data. During late summer, ShCu occurs over cities the most frequently and over open waters the least frequently, and more often over forest than over grassland. The preferential occurrence of ShCu over forest relative to grassland is consistent with surface measurements showing larger heat fluxes over forests. This preferential occurrence also varies with the length scales of land patches with the largest cloud occurrence difference shifting from smaller length scales (<9 km) during midday to larger scales (>9 km) in the early afternoon. Consistent with theory, these signals are more pronounced under low wind conditions. The preferential length scale shift with time suggests the existence of secondary circulations that strengthen and promote convergence over larger spatial scales as the differential land surface heating intensifies.

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“…A recent LES study was designed to directly assess the importance of representing SGS heterogeneity by specifying surface boundary conditions that either allow for varying surface fluxes or are constant across the domain (Simon et al, 2021). Allowing surface fluxes to vary spatially was found to increase domain-average turbulence and cloud liquid water path by helping to organize convection and precipitation.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Allowing surface fluxes to vary spatially was found to increase domain-average turbulence and cloud liquid water path by helping to organize convection and precipitation. Gradients in surface fluxes within a single 100 km domain can therefore generate mesoscale secondary circulations capable of altering the gridmean environment (Simon et al, 2021).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Assessing the Atmospheric Response to Subgrid Surface Heterogeneity in CESM2

Fowler

Neale

Simon

et al. 2022

Preprint

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Land-atmosphere interactions are central to the evolution of the atmospheric boundary layer and the subsequent formation of clouds and precipitation. Existing global climate models represent these connections with bulk approximations on coarse spatial scales, but observations suggest that small-scale variations in surface characteristics and co-located turbulent and momentum fluxes can significantly impact the atmosphere. Recent model development efforts have attempted to capture this phenomenon by coupling existing representations of subgrid-scale (SGS) heterogeneity between land and atmosphere models. Such approaches are in their infancy and it is not yet clear if they can produce a realistic atmospheric response to surface heterogeneity. Here, we implement a parameterization to capture the effects of SGS heterogeneity in the Community Earth System Model (CESM2), and compare single-column simulations against high-resolution Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) large-eddy simulations (LESs), which we use as a proxy for observations. The CESM2 experiments increase the temperature and humidity variances in the lowest atmospheric levels, but the response is weaker than in WRF-LES. In part, this is attributed to an underestimate of surface heterogeneity in the land model due to a lack of SGS meteorology, a separation between deep and shallow convection schemes in the atmosphere, and a lack of explicitly represented mesoscale secondary circulations. These results highlight the complex processes involved in capturing the effects of SGS heterogeneity and suggest the need for parameterizations that communicate their influence not only at the surface but also vertically.

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Semi‐Coupling of a Field‐Scale Resolving Land‐Surface Model and WRF‐LES to Investigate the Influence of Land‐Surface Heterogeneity on Cloud Development

Abstract: A critical challenge in characterizing land-atmosphere interactions across scales in Earth system models (ESMs) is the non-linearity that emerges as a result of spatial heterogeneities over land (

Cited by 25 publications

References 93 publications

Scaling Land‐Atmosphere Interactions: Special or Fundamental?

Scaling Land‐Atmosphere Interactions: Special or Fundamental?

How Does Land Cover and Its Heterogeneity Length Scales Affect the Formation of Summertime Shallow Cumulus Clouds in Observations From the US Southern Great Plains?

Assessing the Atmospheric Response to Subgrid Surface Heterogeneity in CESM2

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