Understanding Land-Surface-Atmosphere Coupling in the Warm Season

This talk will develop an observational framework for understanding the fully coupled land-surface-atmosphere system in the warm season using some 600 station years of hourly data from the Canadian Prairies. Using BSRN data to calibrate the opaque/reflective cloud data to give daily mean SWCF and LWCF, enables the separation of the forcing of the surface climate by radiative and precipitation processes. Sub-stratifying as well by wind-speed and RH further separates the physical processes driving the surface thermodynamic diurnal cycle, giving insight into the climate drivers of the night-time BL and the daytime diurnal convection in the warm season.