Soil evaporation and land surface models

HAPpy Hour Seminar

seminar
Jun. 29, 2018

3:30 pm MDT

NCAR Foothills Lab, FL2-3107
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Abstract:

Land surface models (LSMs) simulate fluxes of energy, water, and carbon fluxes at the interface between the land and the atmosphere. LSM parameterizations of the known physical processes partition the available energy into sensible (H) and latent (E) heat fluxes and also simulate each component of the latent heat flux. Despite the complexity of LSMs soil evaporation parameterizations are based on empirical formulations; the underlying physical mechanisms are largely ignored. In this talk I will introduce the dominant processes that govern soil evaporation into a parameterization suitable for land surface models. The new parameterization stems from a pore scale model (PSM) of evaporation physics. The new method greatly improves the ability of the Australian land surface model (CABLE) to reproduce observed fluxes. The implementation of the PSM in Noah-MP will also be discussed.

Bio about Mark:

Mark Decker is a research fellow at the University of New South Wales. His research focus is hydrometeorological modeling, having contributed to the Noah, CLM, and CABLE land surface models. He received a PhD from the University of Arizona in 2010. Following this he has spent eight years in various roles at the Climate Change Research Centre at the University of New South Wales. Having started as a post doc, he is now a research fellow and lecturer at UNSW.

Mark Decker, a research fellow at the University of New South Wales