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Improving the Representation of Land in Climate Models by Application of EOS ObservationsA NASA grant entitled Project to Interface Climate Modeling on Global and Regional Scales with Earth Observing System (EOS) Observations is being completed in 2001 and a continuation grant entitled Improving the Representation of Land in Climate Models by Application of EOS Observations is beginning in 2001. This research recognizes that the most important properties of the land surface for climate modeling are those that determine how radiative fluxes are balanced by sensible and latent heat fluxes, and consequently, determine temperatures and water resources. The availability of unique new observations from NASA satellites can provide observational guidance as to the quantitative treatment of these processes. However, because earlier treatments of land surface processes have not been formulated to take advantage of such observations, it has been necessary to build on earlier land models to develop new treatments that are more directly formulated to take advantage of what is most observable from space. This has been done as part of the development of the Common Land Model described under the NSF grant. Another major task is to work from the form of the standard products that NASA provides to the form of information directly usable by the climate models. Progress is being especially rapid in the questions as to how land cover is best characterized in a climate model and what are the spatial and seasonally varying patterns of surface albedos and how are these related to the land cover characterization.  |
Atmospheric Dynamics and Climate
Georgia Tech