Identification

Title

Effects of water-table configuration on the planetary boundary layer over the San Joaquin River Watershed, California

Abstract

The boundary layer, land surface, and subsurface are important coevolving components of hydrologic systems. While previous studies have examined the connections between soil moisture, groundwater, and the atmosphere, the atmospheric response to regional water-table drawdown has received less attention. To address this question, a coupled hydrologic-atmospheric model [Parallel Flow hydrologic model (ParFlow) and WRF] was used to simulate the San Joaquin River watershed of central California. This study focuses specifically on the planetary boundary layer (PBL) in simulations with two imposed water-table configurations: a high water table mimicking natural conditions and a lowered water table reflecting historic groundwater extraction in California's Central Valley, although effect of irrigation was not simulated. An ensemble of simulations including three boundary layer schemes and six initial conditions was performed for both water-table conditions to assess conceptual and initial condition uncertainty. Results show that increased regional water-table depth is associated with a significant increase in peak PBL height for both initial condition and boundary layer scheme conditions, although the choice of scheme interacts to affect the magnitude of peak PBL height change. Analysis of simulated land surface fluxes shows the change in PBL height can be attributed to decreasing midday evaporative fraction under lowered water-table conditions. Furthermore, the sensitivity of PBL height to changes in water-table depth appears to depend on local water-table variation within 10 m of the land surface and the regional average water-table depth. Finally, soil moisture changes associated with lowered water tables are linked to changes in PBL circulation as indicated by vertical winds and turbulence kinetic energy.

Resource type

document

Resource locator

Unique resource identifier

code

http://n2t.net/ark:/85065/d7qj7krq

codeSpace

Dataset language

eng

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Classification of spatial data and services

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geoscientificInformation

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title

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reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2016-01-01T00:00:00Z

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publication

effective date

2017-05-01T00:00:00Z

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Copyright 2017 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.

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None

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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

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pointOfContact

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