The Soil Moisture–Precipitation Feedback in Simulations with Explicit and Parameterized Convection

Abstract

Moist convection is a key aspect of the extratropical summer climate and strongly affects the delicate balance of processes that determines the surface climate in response to larger-scale forcings. Previous studies using parameterized convection have found that the feedback between soil moisture and precipitation is predominantly positive (more precipitation over wet soils) over Europe. Here this feedback is investigated for one full month (July 2006) over the Alpine region using two different model configurations. The first one employs regional climate simulations performed with the Consortium for Small-Scale Modeling Model in Climate Mode (CCLM) on a grid spacing of 25 km. The second one uses the same model but integrated on a cloud-resolving grid of 2.2 km, allowing an explicit treatment of convection. Each configuration comprises one control and two sensitivity experiments. The latter start from perturbed soil moisture initial conditions. Comparison of the simulated soil moisture–precipitation feedback reveals significant differences between the two systems. The 25-km simulations sustain a strong positive feedback, while those at 2.2-km resolution are associated with a predominantly negative feedback. Thus the two systems yield not only different strengths of this key feedback but also different signs. This has important implications, with the cloud-resolving model exhibiting a shorter soil moisture memory and a smaller soil moisture–temperature feedback. Analysis shows that the different feedback signs relate to the sensitivity of the simulated convective development to the presence of a stable layer sitting on top of the planetary boundary layer. In the 2.2-km integrations, dry initial soil moisture conditions yield more vigorous thermals (owing to stronger daytime heating), which can more easily break through the stable air barrier, thereby leading to deep convection and ultimately to a negative soil moisture–precipitation feedback loop. In the 25-km integrations, deep convection is much less sensitive to the stable layer because of the design of the employed convective parameterization. The authors also show that there are considerable differences in the simulated soil moisture–precipitation feedback between low-resolution modeling frameworks using different cloud convection schemes.

Diurnal equilibrium convection and land surface–atmosphere interactions in an idealized cloud‐resolving model

“…The subsiding motion suppressed convective activity and precipitation, representing a negative soil moisture precipitation feedback (Cook et al, 2006). For summertime moist convection over land in Europe a similar stabilization of the atmospheric profile over wet soil was described in Hohenegger et al (2009). Furthermore, they found different signs of the soil moisture-precipitation feedback in simulations using parametrized convection and simulations using explicitly resolved convection.…”

“…It should be stressed that the current simulations cannot be directly compared to the simulations of Hohenegger et al (2009). An increase (decrease) of soil moisture in their cloud-resolving simulations did lead to larger (smaller) latent heat fluxes, but reduced (enhanced) precipitation amounts (see their Figure 6), which is characteristic for a transient phase, where the approximate balance between evaporation and precipitation is not necessarily given.…”

“…As described in Hohenegger et al (2009), valley circulations may be amplified or damped by dry and wet soils, respectively, with pronounced implications on afternoon convection. In addition, we do not include largescale water bodies as, for example, in Cook et al (2006), that modify the patterns of moisture convergence.…”

Mean and extreme precipitation over European river basins better simulated in a 25 km AGCM

“…GCMs also remain important for providing initial and boundary conditions for RCMs (e.g. Kendon et al, 2010), which now yield kilometre-scale climate simulations (Hohenegger et al, 2008;Kendon et al, 2014;Prein et al, 2015), allowing for convection-permitting simulations crucial for representing, in particular, sub-daily precipitation extremes Kendon et al, 2017) and the soil moistureprecipitation feedback (Hohenegger et al, 2009).…”

Exploring metrics of extreme daily precipitation in a large ensemble of regional climate model simulations

“…Convection is not resolved in the current generation of regional climate models (RCMs), and models use parameterizations to represent convection. It is known that these parameterizations have shortcomings, for example in the representation of the diurnal cycle (Guichard et al 2004) or the sensitivity to soil conditions (Hohenegger et al 2009). …”