Identification

Title

ISOLESC: A coupled isotope-LSM-LES-Cloud modeling system to investigate the water budget in the atmospheric boundary layer

Abstract

Stable isotopes of water (H2O, HDO, and (H2O)-O-18) are tracers that provide powerful constraints on water transport processes in the atmosphere. This paper presents a description of an atmospheric boundary layer (ABL) simulation system called ISOLESC that couples water isotope fractionation processes with a land surface model, a large eddy simulation model, and a two-moment cloud microphysics parameterization. Results from two model configurations-one with shallow precipitating cumulus and the other for a cloud-free ABL-are presented to evaluate the model performance and determine its sensitivity to isotopic parameterizations. The coupled model successfully reproduces important ABL statistics (ABL height, cloud fraction, and cloud liquid water content), the expected effects of mixing and fractionation on the time evolution of ABL vapor isotopic composition, and observed diurnal variations of near-surface water vapor isotopic composition. For the current configuration, nondiscriminating entrainment contributes 17% to the subdaily time variation of near-surface vapor deuterium excess, while surface evapotranspiration contributes 83%. The isotopic compositions of water vapor and cloud water are insensitive to mesh resolution, but the profiles of cloud water specific humidity, rainwater specific humidity, and its isotopic ratios show moderate response to changes in grid size. Since ISOLESC resolves the energy containing scales of turbulent motions in the ABL and incorporates microphysical processes, it can be used for constraining ABL parameterizations. We find that a further improvement of raindrop reevaporation in the current cloud microphysical scheme is required in order to produce realistic near-surface raindrop deuterium excess for the case simulated here. We suggest that ISOLESC provides a quantitative framework for utilizing vapor-phase isotopic measurements to study local hydrological processes.

Resource type

document

Resource locator

Unique resource identifier

code

http://n2t.net/ark:/85065/d7z322mh

codeSpace

Dataset language

eng

Spatial reference system

code identifying the spatial reference system

Classification of spatial data and services

Topic category

geoscientificInformation

Keywords

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keyword value

Text

originating controlled vocabulary

title

Resource Type

reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2016-01-01T00:00:00Z

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Temporal reference

Temporal extent

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End position

Dataset reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2018-10-29T00:00:00Z

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Conformity

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version of format

Constraints related to access and use

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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