HR: 14:25h
AN: C23B-04    [Abstracts]
TI: Characterizing Land-Atmosphere Coupling and the Implications for Subsurface Thermodynamics
AU: * Stieglitz, M
EM: marc.stieglitz@ce.gatech.edu
AF: Georgia Institute of Technology, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering 790 Atlantic Drive, Atlanta, GA 30332-0355 United States
AU: Smerdon, J E
EM: jsmerdon@ldeo.columbia.edu
AF: Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University, 61 Route 9W P.O. Box 1000, Palisades, NY 10964 United States
AB: Characterizing temporal and spatial changes in the strength of land-atmosphere coupling and its subsequent impact on the time and depth evolution of temperatures at and below the ground surface is fundamental to many investigations in climate science. To date, the modeling community has largely relied on complex land-surface schemes that seek to model the relevant physical, chemical and biological processes that drive the dynamics of land-atmosphere coupling. The objective of this work, however, is to develop a simple land-interface modeling (SLIM) scheme that captures the seasonal and inter-annual behavior of land-atmosphere coupling, as well as the subsequent surface and subsurface temperature evolution. The basic construct of the model employs the one-dimensional diffusion equation driven by a surface-flux boundary condition. While the underlying physics of the model is straightforward, the SLIM framework allows a qualitative understanding of the first-order controls that govern the seasonal coupling between the atmosphere and ground. The model is used to perform a suite of experiments that demonstrate how changes in surface air temperature and coupling conditions control subsurface thermodynamics. Our approach is in no way a substitute for the use of complex models. Rather, this work suggests that a collective approach employing both complex models and the simpler formalism that we suggest here, when joined with analyses of observational data, has the potential to increase our understanding of land-atmosphere coupling and the subsequent controls on the evolution of subsurface temperatures in both time and space.
DE: 1625 Geomorphology and weathering (0790, 1824, 1825, 1826, 1886)
DE: 1630 Impacts of global change (1225)
DE: 1827 Glaciology (0736, 0776, 1863)
SC: Cryosphere [C]
MN: Fall Meeting 2005