Couple land surface model with climate model in the Mississippi River Basin

Abstract:

The ability of the fully coupling of Weather Research & Forecasting Model (WRF) and Variable Infiltration Capacity (VIC) model to produce hydrological and climate variables in the Mississippi River Basin (MRB) was evaluated. The performance of the fully couple of WRF and VIC was assessed with respect to key simulated variables through a comparison with observations and well calibrated VIC model. Firstly, spatiotemporal comparisons of the simulated evaporation (ET) and soil moisture (SM) produced by the VIC calibrated run (base data) and fully coupling run were conducted. Secondly, comparisons of the temperature (T), precipitation (P) and runoff (Q) simulated by the fully coupling run and observations were conducted. The results showed that: 1) the fully couple of VIC with WRF was able to achieve good agreement in the simulation of SM, ET, and T. 2) The fully coupling has significant improvement in simulation of Q and P in compare with the results from offline runs. These suggest that the VIC and WRF coupling can be used to simulate the hydrological and climate variables without causing a large change in the moisture budget in the MRB.