HR: 0800h
AN: B51A-0042    [Abstracts]
TI: Exploring the Consequences of Changing Land Surface Phenology on Regional Hydrometeorology in the Eurasian Semi-Arid Grain Belt
AU: Capehart, W J
EM: william.capehart@sdsmt.edu
AF: South Dakota School of Mines and Technology, Institute of Atmospheric Sciences, 213 Mineral Industries Building, 501 E. St. Joseph St., Rapid City, SD 57701-3995, United States
AU: * Henebry, G M
EM: geoffrey.henebry@sdstate.edu
AF: South Dakota State University, Geographic Information Science Center of Excellence, 1021 Medary Ave., Wecota Hall 506B, Brookings, SD 57007-3510, United States
AU: de Beurs, K M
EM: kdebeurs@vt.edu
AF: Virginia Tech, Department of Geography, 115 Major Williams Hall, Blacksburg, VA 24061, United States
AB: Have the changes in land surface phenology following the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union affected the regional hydrometeorology of the semi-arid grain belt that extends from northern Kazakhstan westward across southern Russia into eastern Ukraine? We modified MM5 running as a regional climate model with the NOAH land surface scheme to accept an updated fractional vegetation cover (FVC) layer every ten days. This new FVC time series was generated from the PAL NDVI dataset using the recent Scaled Vegetation Index algorithm (Jiang et al. 2006 RSE 101:366-378). The seasonal study period ran from March through September. We focused on years before and after the disintegration of the Soviet Union that were selected considering that the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) has been shown to affect conditions in at least part of the study area. We present results for 1985 (neutral NAO), 1989 (high NAO), 1996 (low NAO), and 1997 (neutral NAO). We focus on two response fields: monthly total precipitation and monthly specific humidity at 850 hPa. There are substantial spatially coherent differences between predictions from the default MM5 FVC series and the new FVC series as measured by RMSE and bias. Use of the new FVC image time series enables MM5/NOAH to respond to a more realistic representation of the tempo and spatial heterogeneity of land surface phenology.
DE: 0438 Diel, seasonal, and annual cycles (4227)
DE: 0480 Remote sensing
DE: 1843 Land/atmosphere interactions (1218, 1631, 3322)
DE: 1851 Plant ecology (0476)
SC: Biogeosciences [B]
MN: 2007 Fall Meeting