The impact of soil moisture on the spin up of 1-D Noah land surface model at a site in monsoonal region

Abstract:

Model spin-up is the process through which the model is adequately equilibrated to ensure balance between the mass fields and velocity fields. In this study, an offline 1-D Noah land surface model (LSM) has been used to investigate the impact of soil moisture on the model spin up at Kharagpur, India which is a site in monsoonal region. The model is integrated recursively for 3-years to assess its spin-up behavior. Several numerical experiments are performed to investigate the impact of initial soil moisture and subsequent dry or wet condition on model spin-up. These include simulations with different initial soil moisture content (observed soil moisture; dry soil; moderately wet soil; saturated soil), simulations initialized before different rain conditions (no rain; infrequent rain; continuous rain) and simulations initialized in different seasons (Winter, Spring, Summer/Pre-Monsoon, Monsoon and Autumn). It is noted that the model has significantly longer spin-up when initialized with very low initial soil moisture content than with higher soil moisture content. It is also seen that in general, simulations initialized just before a continuous rainfall event have the least spin-up time. In a region affected by the monsoon, such as Kharagpur, this observation is reinforced by the results from the simulations initialized in different seasons. It is seen that for monsoonal region, the model spin-up time is least for simulations initialized during Summer/Pre-monsoon. Model initialized during the Monsoon has a longer spin-up than that initialized in any other season. It appears that the model has shorter spin-up if it reaches the equilibrium state predominantly via drying process. It is also observed that the spin-up of offline 1-D Noah LSM may be as low as two months under quasi-equilibrium condition if the initial soil moisture content and time of start of simulations are chosen carefully.