Incorporating organic soil into a global climate model |
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Authors: | David M Lawrence Andrew G Slater |
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Institution: | (1) National Center for Atmospheric Research, P.O. Box 3000, Boulder, CO 80307-3000, USA;(2) Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences, Boulder, CO, USA |
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Abstract: | Organic matter significantly alters a soil’s thermal and hydraulic properties but is not typically included in land-surface
schemes used in global climate models. This omission has consequences for ground thermal and moisture regimes, particularly
in the high-latitudes where soil carbon content is generally high. Global soil carbon data is used to build a geographically
distributed, profiled soil carbon density dataset for the Community Land Model (CLM). CLM parameterizations for soil thermal
and hydraulic properties are modified to accommodate both mineral and organic soil matter. Offline simulations including organic
soil are characterized by cooler annual mean soil temperatures (up to ∼2.5°C cooler for regions of high soil carbon content).
Cooling is strong in summer due to modulation of early and mid-summer soil heat flux. Winter temperatures are slightly warmer
as organic soils do not cool as efficiently during fall and winter. High porosity and hydraulic conductivity of organic soil
leads to a wetter soil column but with comparatively low surface layer saturation levels and correspondingly low soil evaporation.
When CLM is coupled to the Community Atmosphere Model, the reduced latent heat flux drives deeper boundary layers, associated
reductions in low cloud fraction, and warmer summer air temperatures in the Arctic. Lastly, the insulative properties of organic
soil reduce interannual soil temperature variability, but only marginally. This result suggests that, although the mean soil
temperature cooling will delay the simulated date at which frozen soil begins to thaw, organic matter may provide only limited
insulation from surface warming. |
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Keywords: | Soil carbon Soil temperature Land-surface scheme Permafrost Climate modeling |
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