Baker, JCA, de Souza, DC, Kubota, P et al. (7 more authors) (2021) An assessment of land-atmosphere interactions over South America using satellites, reanalysis and two global climate models. Journal of Hydrometeorology, 22 (4). pp. 905-922. ISSN 1525-755X
Abstract
In South America, land-atmosphere interactions have an important impact on climate, particularly the regional hydrological cycle, but detailed evaluation of these processes in global climate models has been limited. Focussing on the satellite-era period of 2003–2014, we assess land-atmosphere interactions on annual to seasonal timescales over South America in satellite products, a novel reanalysis (ERA5-Land) and two global climate models: the Brazilian Global Atmospheric Model version 1.2 (BAM-1.2) and the UK Hadley Centre Global Environment Model version 3 (HadGEM3). We identify key features of South American land-atmosphere interactions represented in satellite and model datasets, including seasonal variation in coupling strength, large-scale spatial variation in the sensitivity of evapotranspiration to surface moisture, and a dipole in evaporative regime across the continent. Differences between products are also identified, with ERA5-Land, HadGEM3 and BAM-1.2 showing opposite interactions to satellites over parts of the Amazon and the Cerrado, and stronger land-atmosphere coupling along the North Atlantic coast. Where models and satellites disagree on the strength and direction of land-atmosphere interactions, precipitation biases and misrepresentation of processes controlling surface soil moisture are implicated as likely drivers. These results show where improvement of model processes could reduce uncertainty in the modelled climate response to land-use change, and highlight where model biases could unrealistically amplify drying or wetting trends in future climate projections. Finally, HadGEM3 and BAM-1.2 are consistent with the median response of an ensemble of nine CMIP6 models, showing they are broadly representative of the latest generation of climate models.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2021 American Meteorological Society. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Environment (Leeds) > School of Earth and Environment (Leeds) > Inst for Climate & Atmos Science (ICAS) (Leeds) The University of Leeds > Faculty of Environment (Leeds) > School of Geography (Leeds) > Ecology & Global Change (Leeds) |
Funding Information: | Funder Grant number Met Office Not Known EU - European Union 771492 |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 18 Feb 2021 15:28 |
Last Modified: | 01 Apr 2021 10:04 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | American Meteorological Society |
Identification Number: | 10.1175/jhm-d-20-0132.1 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:171267 |