Identification

Title

Assessing and improving Noah-MP land model simulations for the central Tibetan Plateau

Abstract

The Tibetan Plateau (TP) region experiences strong land-atmosphere interactions, and as an elevated heating source, significantly influences the formation of the Asian monsoon. Those interactions are not well represented in current land-surface models (LSMs), partly due to difficulties in representing heterogeneities in soil structures in LSM. Simulations using the Noah with multiparameterization options (Noah-MP) LSM are employed to assess the relative importance of parameterizing vertical soil heterogeneity, organic matter, and soil rhizosphere and their impacts on seasonal evolution of soil temperature, soil moisture, and surface energy and water budgets at the sparsely vegetated Amdo site located in central TP. The LSM spin-up time at the central TP depends on the complexity of the model physics, ranging from 4 years with simplest soil physics to 30 years with the addition of organic matter and spare to dense rhizosphere parameterization in Noah-MP. Representing layered soil texture and organic matter does not improve low biases in topsoil moisture. Reducing the saturated conductivity from the mucilage in the rhizosphere produces better results. Surface sensible and latent heat fluxes are better simulated in the monsoon season as well. Adding layered soil texture and organic matter in Noah-MP retard the thawing in deep soil layers, and the rhizosphere effect delays thawing even more in the transient season. Uncertainties in soil initialization significantly affect deep-soil temperature and moisture, but uncertainties in atmospheric forcing conditions mainly affect topsoil variables and consequently the surface energy fluxes. Differing land-surface physics cause 36% uncertainty in the accumulated evapotranspiration and subsurface runoff.

Resource type

document

Resource locator

Unique resource identifier

code

http://n2t.net/ark:/85065/d77s7q3x

codeSpace

Dataset language

eng

Spatial reference system

code identifying the spatial reference system

Classification of spatial data and services

Topic category

geoscientificInformation

Keywords

Keyword set

keyword value

Text

originating controlled vocabulary

title

Resource Type

reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2016-01-01T00:00:00Z

Geographic location

West bounding longitude

East bounding longitude

North bounding latitude

South bounding latitude

Temporal reference

Temporal extent

Begin position

End position

Dataset reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2015-09-27T00:00:00Z

Frequency of update

Quality and validity

Lineage

Conformity

Data format

name of format

version of format

Constraints related to access and use

Constraint set

Use constraints

Limitations on public access

None

Responsible organisations

Responsible party

contact position

OpenSky Support

organisation name

UCAR/NCAR - Library

full postal address

PO Box 3000

Boulder

80307-3000

email address

opensky@ucar.edu

web address

http://opensky.ucar.edu/

name: homepage

responsible party role

pointOfContact

Metadata on metadata

Metadata point of contact