Using Observations to Models to Understand the Effects of Irrigation, Groundwater Dynamics, Land Surface/Subsurface Heterogeneity on Land-Atmosphere-Cloud-Interactions: Evidence from the Southern Great Plains

Abstract:

Land-Atmosphere-Cloud Interactions (LACI) are important for a number of physical and biological processes that drive the climate system. Historical and planned observations from the US Department of Energy's Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) Climate Research Facility Southern Great Plain (SGP) site provide unique opportunities for analyzing local land-atmosphere interactions and serve as metrics for benchmarking model simulated land and atmospheric variables. This region is of particular interest because it has been identified as a “hotspot” of land atmosphere interactions under past, present, and future climate conditions. In this presentation, we will discuss results from several modeling studies integrated with observations that evaluate the impacts of a few selected land surface processes/land model representations on surface energy fluxes, structure of boundary layer turbulence, and hence potentially cloud formation and precipitation, that have shown to be important over the SGP region, including (1) the role of land surface/subsurface heterogeneity in terms of land cover and soil texture that affects the spatial patterns of the soil moisture and surface fluxes, (2) anthropogenic disturbance to the terrestrial hydrological cycle through irrigation as a result of agricultural expansion over the region, and (3) the interactions between soil moisture and groundwater dynamics that alter evapotranspiration and partitioning of the surface energy budget. Future research directions to be explored by the community to better understand LACI will also be discussed.