Freeze-thaw processes in soils,including changes in frost and thaw fronts(FTFs),are important physical processes.The movement of FTFs affects soil hydrothermal characteristics,as well as energy and water exchanges between the land surface and the atmosphere and hydrothermal processes in the land surface.This paper reduces the issue of soil freezing and thawing to a multiple moving-boundary problem and develops a soil water and heat transfer model which considers the effects of FTF on soil hydrothermal processes.A local adaptive variable-grid method is used to discretize the model.Sensitivity tests based on the hierarchical structure of the Community Land Model(CLM)show that multiple FTFs can be continuously tracked,which overcomes the difficulties of isotherms that cannot simultaneously simulate multiple FTFs in the same soil layer.The local adaptive variable-grid method is stable and offers computational efficiency several times greater than the high-resolution case.The simulated FTF depths,soil temperatures,and soil moisture values fit well with the observed data,which further demonstrates the potential application of this simulation to the land-surface process model.
WANG AiWenXIE ZhengHuiFENG XiaoBingTIAN XiangJunQIN PeiHua
Freeze-thaw processes significantly modulate hydraulic and thermal characteristics of soil. The changes in the frost and thaw fronts(FTFs) affect the water and energy cycles between the land surface and the atmosphere. Thus, the frozen soil comprising permafrost and seasonally frozen soil has important effects on the land surface hydrology in cold regions. In this study, a two-directional freeze and thaw algorithm is incorporated into a thermal diffusion equation for simulating FTFs. A local adaptive variable-grid method is used to discretize the model. Sensitivity tests demonstrate that the method is stable and FTFs can be tracked continuously. The FTFs and soil temperature at the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau D66 site are simulated hourly from September 1, 1997 to September 22, 1998. The results show that the incorporated model performs much better in the soil temperature simulation than the original thermal diffusion equation,showing potential applications of the method in land-surface process modeling.
The regional climate model RegCM3 incorporating the crop model CERES,called the RegCM3CERES model,was used to study the efects of crop growth and development on regional climate and hydrological processes over seven river basins in China.A 20-year numerical simulation showed that incorporating the crop growth and development processes improved the simulation of precipitation over the Haihe River Basin,Songhuajiang River Basin and Pearl River Basin.When compared with the RegCM3 control run,RegCM3CERES reduced the negative biases of monthly mean temperature over most of the seven basins in summer,especially the Haihe River Basin and Huaihe River Basin.The simulated maximum monthly evapotranspiration for summer(JJA)was around 100 mm in the basins of the Yangtze,Haihe,Huaihe and Pearl Rivers.The seasonal and annual variations of water balance components(runof,evapotranspiration and total precipitation)over all seven basins indicate that changes of evapotranspiration agree well with total precipitation.Compared to the RegCM3,RegCM3CERES simulations indicate reduced local water recycling rate over most of the seven basins due to lower evapotranspiration and greater water flux into these basins and an increased precipitation in the Heihe River Basin and Yellow River Basin,but reduced precipitation in the other five basins.Furthermore,a lower summer leaf area index(1.20 m2m 2),greater root soil moisture(0.01 m3m 3),lower latent heat flux(1.34 W m 2),and greater sensible heat flux(2.04 W m 2)are simulated for the Yangtze River Basin.
Seasonal and interannual changes in the Earth's gravity field are mainly due to mass exchange among the atmosphere,ocean,and continental water sources.The terrestrial water storage changes,detected as gravity changes by the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment(GRACE) satellites,are mainly caused by precipitation,evapotranspiration,river transportation and downward infiltration processes.In this study,a land data assimilation system LDAS-G was developed to assimilate the GRACE terrestrial water storage(TWS) data into the Community Land Model(CLM3.5) using the POD-based ensemble four-dimensional variational assimilation method PODEn4 DVar,disaggregating the GRACE large-scale terrestrial water storage changes vertically and in time,and placing constraints on the simulation of vertical hydrological variables to improve land surface hydrological simulations.The ideal experiments conducted at a single point and assimilation experiments carried out over China by the LDAS-G data assimilation system showed that the system developed in this study improved the simulation of land surface hydrological variables,indicating the potential of GRACE data assimilation in large-scale land surface hydrological research and applications.
To improve the capability of numerical modeling of climate-groundwater interactions, a groundwater component and new surface/subsurface runoff schemes were incorporated into the regional climate model RegCM3, renamed RegCM3 Hydro. 20-year simulations from both models were used to investigate the effects of groundwater dynamics and surface/subsurface runoff parameterizations on regional climate over seven river basins in China. A comparison of results shows that RegCM3 Hydro reduced the positive biases of annual and summer (June, July, August) precipitation over six river basins, while it slightly increased the bias over the Huaihe River Basin in eastern China. RegCM3 Hydro also reduced the cold bias of surface air temperature from RegCM3 across years, especially for the Haihe and the Huaihe river basins, with significant bias reductions of 0.80℃ and 0.88℃, respectively. The spatial distribution and seasonal variations of water table depth were also well captured. With the new surface and subsurface runoff schemes, RegCM3 Hydro increased annual surface runoff by 0.11-0.62 mm d-1 over the seven basins. Though previous studies found that incorporating a groundwater component tends to increase soil moisture due to the consideration of upward groundwater recharge, our present work shows that the modified runoff schemes cause less infiltration, which outweigh the recharge from groundwater and result in drier soil, and consequently cause less latent heat and more sensible heat over most of the basins.
The regional climate model RegCM4 was used to investigate the regional climate effects of land cover change over China. Two 24-year simulations (1978-2001), one with the land cover derived from the MODIS data and the other with the CLCV (Chinese land cover derived from vegetation map) data, were conducted for a region encompassing China. The difierences between the MODIS and CLCV data re?ect characteristics of desertification and degradation of vegetation in China. Results indicate that the land cover change has important impacts on local climate through mechanisms related to changes in surface energy, water budgets and macro-scale circulation. In summer, the land cover change leads to a decrease in surface air temperature over southern China, a reduction in precipitation and an increase in surface air temperature in the transitional climate zone and the northern Tibetan Plateau, and an increase in inter-annual variability of surface air temperature in the marginal monsoon zone and northwestern China. Strengthened southwesterly winds increase precipitation to some extent in central and eastern Inner Mongolia by enhancing water vapor transport. In winter, enhanced northerly winds, bringing more dry and cold air, lead to a reduction in precipitation and temperature over areas south of the Yellow River.
A 20-year simulation of regional climate over East Asia by the regional climate model RegCM3_CERES (Regional Climate Model version 3 coupled with the Crop Estimation through Resource and Environment Synthesis) was carried out and compared with observations and the original RegCM3 model to comprehensively evaluate its performance in simulating the regional climate over continental China. The results showed that RegCM3_CERES reproduced the regional climate at a resolution of 60 km over China by using ERA40 data as the boundary conditions, albeit with some limitations. The model captured the basic characteristics of the East Asian circulation, the spatial distribution of mean precipitation and temperature, and the daily characteristics of precipitation and temperature. However, it underestimated both the intensity of the monsoon in the monsoonal area and precipitation in southern China, overestimated precipitation in northern China, and produced a systematic cold temperature bias over most of continental China. Despite these limitations, it was concluded that the RegCM3_CERES model is able to simulate the regional climate over continental China reasonably well.
Simulations were conducted with the regional climate model RegCM incorporating water table dynamics from 1 September 1982 to 28 August 2002 to detect precipitation and temperature extremes. Compared with observed r10(number of days with precipitation ≥ 10 mm d–1), RegCM3_Hydro(the regional climate model with water table dynamics considered) simulated rain belts, including those in southern China and the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River, and provided data for arid to semi-arid areas such as the Heihe River Basin in northwestern China. RegCM3_Hydro indicated a significant increasing trend of r95p(days with daily precipitation greater than the 95th percentile of daily amounts) for the Yangtze, Yellow, and Pearl River basins, consistent with r95p observations. The Haihe River Basin was also chosen as a specific case to detect the effect of groundwater on extreme precipitation using peaks over threshold(POT)-based generalized Pareto distribution(GPD) with parameters estimated by the L-moment method. Quantile plots showed that all but a few of the plotted points were distributed near diagonal lines and the modeled data fitted well with the samples. Finally, the effects of water table dynamics on temperature extremes were also evaluated. In the Yellow River Basin and Songhuajiang River Basin, the trends of the number of warm days(TX95n) from RegCM3_Hydro matched observed values more closely when water table dynamics were considered, and clearly increasing numbers of warm days from 1983 to 2001 were detected.
