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Markku Rummukainen. Photo.

Markku Rummukainen

Professor

Markku Rummukainen. Photo.

Impact of soil moisture-climate feedbacks on CMIP5 projections: First results from the GLACE-CMIP5 experiment

Author

  • Sonia I. Seneviratne
  • Micah Wilhelm
  • Tanja Stanelle
  • Bart van den Hurk
  • Stefan Hagemann
  • Alexis Berg
  • Frederique Cheruy
  • Matthew E. Higgins
  • Arndt Meier
  • Victor Brovkin
  • Martin Claussen
  • Agnes Ducharne
  • Jean-Louis Dufresne
  • Kirsten L. Findell
  • Josefine Ghattas
  • David M. Lawrence
  • Sergey Malyshev
  • Markku Rummukainen
  • Benjamin Smith

Summary, in English

The Global Land-Atmosphere Climate Experiment-Coupled Model Intercomparison Project phase 5 (GLACE-CMIP5) is a multimodel experiment investigating the impact of soil moisture-climate feedbacks in CMIP5 projections. We present here first GLACE-CMIP5 results based on five Earth System Models, focusing on impacts of projected changes in regional soil moisture dryness (mostly increases) on late 21st century climate. Projected soil moisture changes substantially impact climate in several regions in both boreal and austral summer. Strong and consistent effects are found on temperature, especially for extremes (about 1-1.5K for mean temperature and 2-2.5K for extreme daytime temperature). In the Northern Hemisphere, effects on mean and heavy precipitation are also found in most models, but the results are less consistent than for temperature. A direct scaling between soil moisture-induced changes in evaporative cooling and resulting changes in temperature mean and extremes is found in the simulations. In the Mediterranean region, the projected soil moisture changes affect about 25% of the projected changes in extreme temperature.

Department/s

  • Centre for Environmental and Climate Science (CEC)
  • Dept of Physical Geography and Ecosystem Science
  • MERGE: ModElling the Regional and Global Earth system
  • BECC: Biodiversity and Ecosystem services in a Changing Climate

Publishing year

2013

Language

English

Pages

5212-5217

Publication/Series

Geophysical Research Letters

Volume

40

Issue

19

Document type

Journal article

Publisher

American Geophysical Union (AGU)

Topic

  • Physical Geography
  • Earth and Related Environmental Sciences

Keywords

  • CMIP5
  • soil moisture
  • feedbacks
  • climate extremes
  • land-atmosphere
  • interactions
  • projections

Status

Published

ISBN/ISSN/Other

  • ISSN: 1944-8007