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A study on the role of land-atmosphere coupling on the south Asian monsoon climate variability using a regional climate model

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Abstract

Land-atmosphere coupling over the south Asian monsoon region is examined using a regional climate model. For this purpose, the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model with a resolution of 45 km was used. In the control experiment (CTL), the model was integrated from the year 2000 to 2011 and allowed the soil moisture interaction with the atmosphere using a coupled land surface model. In the second experiment (CSM), the soil moisture evolution at each time step was replaced with the climatology of soil moisture taken from the control run. The results reveal that land-atmosphere coupling plays a critical role in influencing the south Asian monsoon climate variability. Soil moisture is found to have stronger impacts on daily maximum temperature compared to minimum temperature. Soil moisture also makes a significant contribution to monsoon rainfall variability over the monsoon region. The coupling strength for large-scale rainfall is found to be higher compared to that of cumulus rainfall. Soil moisture is found more strongly coupled to sensible heat flux over most of the monsoon region.

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Acknowledgments

We thank the Director, National Atmospheric Research Laboratory, Gadanki, India for providing support and encouragement to carry out this study. We would like to thank Dr. Zhang, the Center for Monsoon System Research, Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences for useful discussions on the subject. The TRMM rainfall data used in this study were produced with the Giovanni online data system, developed and maintained by the NASA GES DISK. ECMWF ERA-Interim data used in this study project have been provided by ECMWF have been obtained from the ECMWF data server. Authors thank the editor and anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments, which helped to improve the manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. National Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasting, ESSO MoES, Sector-62, Noida, India

    C. K. Unnikrishnan

  2. Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology, Pune, 411 008, India

    M. Rajeevan

  3. Sri Venkateswara University, Tirupati, 517 502, India

    S. Vijaya Bhaskara Rao

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  1. C. K. Unnikrishnan
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  2. M. Rajeevan
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  3. S. Vijaya Bhaskara Rao
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Correspondence to C. K. Unnikrishnan.

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Unnikrishnan, C.K., Rajeevan, M. & Vijaya Bhaskara Rao, S. A study on the role of land-atmosphere coupling on the south Asian monsoon climate variability using a regional climate model. Theor Appl Climatol 127, 949–964 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00704-015-1680-y

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