Identification

Title

Assessing the use of subgrid land model output to study impacts of land cover change

Abstract

Subgrid information from land models has the potential to be a powerful tool for investigating land-atmosphere interactions, but relatively few studies have attempted to exploit subgrid output. In this study, we modify the configuration of the Community Land Model version CLM4.5 so that each plant functional type (PFT) is assigned its own soil column. We compare subgrid and grid cell-averaged air temperature and surface energy fluxes from this modified case (PFTCOL) to a case with the default configuration-a shared soil column for all PFTs (CTRL)-and examine the difference in simulated surface air temperature between grass and tree PFTs within the same grid cells (ΔTGT). The magnitude and spatial patterns of ΔTGT from PFTCOL agree more closely with observations, ranging from −1.5 K in boreal regions to +0.6 K in the tropics. We find that the column configuration has a large effect on PFT-level energy fluxes. In the CTRL configuration, the PFT-level annual mean ground heat flux (G) differs substantially from zero. For example, at a typical tropical grid cell, the annual G is 31.8 W m⁻² for the tree PFTs and −14.7 W m⁻² for grass PFTs. In PFTCOL, G is always close to zero. These results suggest that care must be taken when assessing local land cover change impacts with subgrid information. For models with PFTs on separate columns, it may be possible to isolate the differences in land surface fluxes between vegetation types that would be associated with land cover change from other climate forcings and feedbacks in climate model simulations.

Resource type

document

Resource locator

Unique resource identifier

code

http://n2t.net/ark:/85065/d71v5gmt

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

2016-06-16T00:00:00Z

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