Land-Surface-Cloud-Climate Coupling on the Canadian Prairies
Land-Surface-Cloud-Climate Coupling on the Canadian Prairies
Previously Published Material: This is an update on an on-going series of papers: four were published in JGR in 2013, 2014. Two more are in preparation: these are the main focus of this talk. Some preliminary results were presented at the AGU Dec 2014 meeting in 2 invited presentations.
Abstract ID#: 33495
English Abstract:
The long-term hourly Canadian Prairie data set (1953-present) is transforming our understanding of land-atmosphere coupling and hydrometeorology, because the opaque/reflective cloud observations can be calibrated to give daily mean SWCF and LWCF using BSRN data. An ongoing series of papers (see http://alanbetts.com) is mapping the coupling between the diurnal climate of temperature, humidity, precipitation and cloud from the daily to annual timescales. Sub-stratifying by wind-speed, precipitation anomalies and day-night cloud symmetry gives observational insight into the physical processes driving the fully coupled surface diurnal cycle in the warm season, as a baseline for model evaluation.