HR: 0830h
AN: A41A-04    [Abstracts]
TI: Modeling Prairie Wetland Weather and Climate Feedbacks in the Northern Great Plains
AU: * Capehart, W J
EM: William.Capehart@sdsmt.edu
AF: Institute of Atmospheric Sciences, SD School of Mines and Technology, 501 East Saint Joseph Street, Rapid City, SD 57701-3995 United States
AU: Taylor, J A
EM: taylor201@llnl.gov
AF: Climate Change and Model Evaluation Group, Atmospheric Science Division, L-103, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, P.O. Box 808, 7000 East Avenue, Livermore, CA 94551-0808 United States
AB: Storm-scale simulations of the Northern Great Plains have shown that the prairie wetland systems in the region influence warm-season convective systems even under synoptic-scale forcings. These complex surface water systems, in turn, swell in surface area during wet cycles and contract (and in some cases completely disappear into the cropland/pastureland land cover matrix) during dry cycles. Since the early-to-mid 1990s, these wetland systems have expanded to their historical maximum. The resulting expansions have had an impact on surface hydrology, and agricultural practices (including new crop rotation regimes in the affected areas) and may impact regional climate feedbacks. To examine the potential for these feedbacks, we shall present results of regional climate simulations of the recent decadal period featuring comparisons of precipitation and evaporation patterns with the ambient land cover regimes currently used in mesoscale and regional climate models (which do not include any reference to the larger wetland system in the region), and approximations of the pre-expansion and current wetland states using modified land cover and soil moisture patterns as a proxy. These latter simulations represent a first step in developing a companion wetland parameterization which could facilitate not only coupled hydroclimatological studies of the region, but ecological and biogeochemical studies as well.
DE: 1620 Climate dynamics (3309)
DE: 1833 Hydroclimatology
DE: 1890 Wetlands
DE: 3322 Land/atmosphere interactions
DE: 3337 Numerical modeling and data assimilation
SC: Atmospheric Sciences [A]
MN: 2005 Joint Assembly