Coupling the Land Surface to Radiative and Hydrological Processes in a Climate Model (01/2004 - 12/2006)

Proposal to National Science Foundation, NSF PD 98-5740 Climate Dynamics Program

Principal Investigator: Robert E. Dickinson

Tel: 404-385-1509

Fax: 404-385-1510

Email: robted@eas.gatech.edu

Summary

This proposal lays out a research program at the cutting edge of current issues of the connections between land surface processes and climate in the context of climate modeling. PI Dickinson has been carrying out such a program since the late 1970 when a brief administrative assignment to lead NCAR’s climate research gave him a realization that the treatment of land may be the most important element of a climate model but perhaps the most unrealistically included. The current treatments of land in essentially all current climate models have a strong heritage from my early BATS code. Over the last decade Dickinson has led major efforts to move beyond that code. Many deficiencies in early such treatments have been corrected. Current climate modeling objectives require much more comprehensive and realistic parameterizations and data use. Further diagnostics and underlying concepts are needed to better constrain the performances of land treatments in climate models. How land communicates to the atmosphere through its flux and radiative properties and so modifies clouds and precipitation, and how these are modified by aerosols, still needs to be better understood.

The proposed research program is formulated as a series of issues related to climate modeling. How do the modeled land processes contribute to precipitation? How can we characterize land surface processes in terms of sensitivity and feedbacks? What characterizes the dynamics of soil moisture and runoff? How are clouds and aerosols coupled to land? What bounds can be placed on the classical climate sensitivity and how is it related to coupling to the underlying surface? Some aspects of these questions are best addressed with regional foci. The selected such foci are the Amazon and northern and northwest China.

This series of issues will challenge a current generation of graduate students to make major contributions to climate studies. As climate models improve in other ways, it becomes increasingly evident that further focus on the issues most important for the land component are required to realize the potential of overall increased model reliability and usefulness for such international assessment activities as the IPCC. The proposed funding is almost entirely to support student research. Their training should provide the US and the world will highly capable new scientists in a very important research area. Since all my current students are either of African, African-American, or Chinese origin and the majority of them are female, the requested funding should promote the education of underrepresented minorities. However, the broad issue it is specifically targeted at is the improvement of content and application of climate models for use in national efforts to provide better forecasts of climate variability and in international assessments of the human contributions to climate change.

Anuual Progress Report (2004)

Anuual Progress Report (2005)

Atmospheric Dynamics and Climate

School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences

Georgia Tech

311 Ferst Drive

Atlanta Georgia 30332-0340