Identification

Title

Effects of realistic land surface initializations on subseasonal to seasonal soil moisture and temperature predictability in North America and in changing climate simulated by CCSM4

Abstract

Fully coupled global climate model experiments are performed using the Community Climate System Model version 4.0 (CCSM4) for preindustrial, present, and future climate to study the effects of realistic land surface initializations on subseasonal to seasonal climate forecasts. Model forecasts are verified against model control simulations (perfect model experiments), thus overcoming to some extent issues of uncertainties in the observations and/or model parameterizations. Findings suggest that realistic land surface initialization is important for climate predictability at subseasonal to seasonal time scales. We found the highest predictability for soil moisture, followed by evapotranspiration, temperature, and precipitation. The predictability is highest for the 16 to 30 days forecast period, and it progressively decreases for the second and third month forecasts. We found significant changes in the spatial distributions of temperature predictability in the present and future climate compared to the preindustrial climate, although the spatial average changes for North America were rather small (<10%). To attribute the potential cause of changes in land-driven temperature predictability, they are correlated with the changes in land related climate metrics. The changes in temperature predictability are positively (0.40), and negatively (-0.35) correlated with the changes in nonrainy days evaporative fraction, and changes in dryness index respectively. From this result, the hypothesis arises that wetter conditions favor higher land-driven temperature predictability in North America. We tested the hypothesis by rearranging the predictability experiment ensembles and found support for the hypothesis in the midlatitude regions and short-term forecasts (16 to 30 days).

Resource type

document

Resource locator

Unique resource identifier

code

http://n2t.net/ark:/85065/d7vq33pg

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

2014-12-16T00:00:00Z

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