GC24B-04
Comprehensive Assessment of Land Surface, Snow, and Soil Moisture-Climate Feedbacks by Multi-model Experiments of Land Surface Models under LS3MIP

Tuesday, 15 December 2015: 16:45
3005 (Moscone West)
Taikan Oki1, Hyungjun Kim1, Bart van den Hurk2, Gerhard Krinner3, Chris Derksen4, Sonia I Seneviratne5 and Co-chairs of Land Surface, Snow and Soil moisture MIP, (1)The University of Tokyo, Institute of Industrial Science, Tokyo, Japan, (2)Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute, De Bilt, Netherlands, (3)LGGE, St Martin d'Hères Cedex, France, (4)Environment Canada Toronto, Climate Research Division, Toronto, ON, Canada, (5)ETH Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland
Abstract:
The solid and liquid water stored at the land surface has a large influence on the regional climate, its variability and its predictability, including effects on the energy and carbon cycles. Notably, snow and soil moisture affect surface radiation and flux partitioning properties, moisture storage and land surface memory.

The Land surface, snow and soil moisture model inter-comparison project (LS3MIP) experiments address together the following objectives:

  • an evaluation of the current state of land processes including surface fluxes, snow cover and soil moisture representation in CMIP6 DECK runs (LMIP-protoDECK)
  • a multi-model estimation of the long-term terrestrial energy/water/carbon cycles, using the surface modules of CMIP6 models under observation constrained historical (land reanalysis) and projected future (impact assessment) conditions considering land use/land cover changes. (LMIP)
  • an assessment of the role of snow and soil moisture feedbacks in the regional response to altered climate forcings, focusing on controls of climate extremes, water availability and high-latitude climate in historical and future scenario runs (LFMIP)
  • an assessment of the contribution of land surface processes to the current and future predictability of regional temperature/precipitation patterns. (LFMIP)

These LS3MIP outcomes will contribute to the improvement of climate change projections by reducing the systematic biases from the land surface component of climate models, and a better representation of feedback mechanisms related to snow and soil moisture in climate models. Further, LS3MIP will enable the assessment of probable historical changes in energy, water, and carbon cycles over land surfaces extending more than 100 years, including spatial variability and trends in global runoff, snow cover, and soil moisture that are hard to detect purely based on observations. LS3MIP will also enable the impact assessments of climate changes on hydrological regimes and available freshwater resources including extreme events, such as floods and droughts, based on multi-model ensemble estimates. These achievements are very much expected to contribute considerably to the assessment of the possible changes and impacts of climate changes in the next cycle of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

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