Identification

Title

Effects of initial soil moisture on rainfall generation and subsequent hydrologic response during the North American monsoon

Abstract

Through the use of a mesoscale meteorological model and distributed hydrologic model, the effects of initial soil moisture on rainfall generation, streamflow, and evapotranspiration during the North American monsoon are examined. A collection of atmospheric fields is simulated by varying initial soil moisture in the meteorological model. Analysis of the simulated rainfall fields shows that the total rainfall, intensity, and spatial coverage increase with higher soil moisture. Hydrologic simulations forced by the meteorological fields are performed using two scenarios: (i) fixed soil moisture initializations obtained via a drainage experiment in the hydrologic model and (ii) adjusted initializations to match conditions in the two models. The scenarios indicate that the runoff ratio increases with higher rainfall, although a change is observed from a linear (fixed initialization) to a nonlinear response (adjusted initialization). Variations in basin response are attributed to controls exerted by rainfall, soil, and vegetation properties for varying initial conditions. Antecedent wetness significantly influences the runoff response through the interplay of different runoff generation mechanisms and also controls the evapotranspiration process. The authors conclude that a regional increase in initial soil moisture promotes rainfall generation, streamflow, and evapotranspiration for this warm-season case study.

Resource type

document

Resource locator

Unique resource identifier

code

http://n2t.net/ark:/85065/d70z7494

codeSpace

Dataset language

eng

Spatial reference system

code identifying the spatial reference system

Classification of spatial data and services

Topic category

geoscientificInformation

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Text

originating controlled vocabulary

title

Resource Type

reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2016-01-01T00:00:00Z

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End position

Dataset reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2009-06-01T00:00:00Z

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Use constraints

Copyright 2009 American Meteorological Society (AMS). Permission to use figures, tables, and brief excerpts from this work in scientific and educational works is hereby granted provided that the source is acknowledged. Any use of material in this work that is determined to be "fair use" under Section 107 or that satisfies the conditions specified in Section 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law (17 USC, as revised by P.L. 94-553) does not require the Society's permission. Republication, systematic reproduction, posting in electronic form on servers, or other uses of this material, except as exempted by the above statements, requires written permission or license from the AMS. Additional details are provided in the AMS Copyright Policies, available from the AMS at 617-227-2425 or amspubs@ametsoc.org. Permission to place a copy of this work on this server has been provided by the AMS. The AMS does not guarantee that the copy provided here is an accurate copy of the published work.

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

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Metadata point of contact