Development of the MESH modelling system for hydrological ensemble forecasting of the Laurentian Great Lakes at the regional scale

International audienceEnvironment Canada has been developing a community environmental modelling system (Modélisation Environmentale Communautaire ? MEC), which is designed to facilitate coupling between models focusing on different components of the earth system. The ultimate objective of MEC is to use the coupled models to produce operational forecasts. MESH (MEC ? Surface and Hydrology), a configuration of MEC currently under development, is specialized for coupled land-surface and hydrological models. To determine the specific requirements for MESH, its different components were implemented on the Laurentian Great Lakes watershed, situated on the Canada-US border. This experiment showed that MESH can help us better understand the behaviour of different land-surface models, test different schemes for producing ensemble streamflow forecasts, and provide a means of sharing the data, the models and the results with collaborators and end-users. This modelling framework is at the heart of a testbed proposal for the Hydrologic Ensemble Prediction Experiment (HEPEX) which should allow us to make use of the North American Ensemble Forecasting System (NAEFS) to improve streamflow forecasts of the Great Lakes tributaries, and demonstrate how MESH can contribute to a Community Hydrologic Prediction System (CHPS)

Using the MESH modelling system for hydrological ensemble forecasting of the Laurentian Great Lakes at the regional scale

International audienceEnvironment Canada has been developing a community environmental modelling system (Modélisation Environmentale Communautaire ? MEC), which is designed to facilitate coupling between models focusing on different components of the earth system. The ultimate objective of MEC is to use the coupled models to produce operational forecasts. MESH (MEC ? Surface and Hydrology), a configuration of MEC currently under development, is specialized for coupled land-surface and hydrological models. To determine the specific requirements for MESH, its different components were implemented on the Laurentian Great Lakes watershed, situated on the Canada?U.S. border. This experiment showed that MESH can help us better understand the behaviour of different land-surface models, test different schemes for producing ensemble streamflow forecasts, and provide a means of sharing the data, the models and the results with collaborators and end-users. This modelling framework is at the heart of a testbed proposal for the Hydrologic Ensemble Prediction Experiment (HEPEX) which should allow us to make use of the North American Ensemble Forecasting System (NAEFS) to improve streamflow forecasts of the Great Lakes tributaries, and demonstrate how MESH can contribute to a Community Hydrologic Prediction System (CHPS)

GLACE: the global land–atmosphere coupling experiment. Part I: overview

Permission to place copies of these works on this server has been provided by the American Meteorological Society (AMS). The AMS does not guarantee that the copies provided here are accurate copies of the published work. © Copyright 2006 American Meteorological Society (AMS). Permission to use figures, tables, and brief excerpts from this work in scientific and educational works is hereby granted provided that the source is acknowledged. Any use of material in this work that is determined to be “fair use” under Section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Act or that satisfies the conditions specified in Section 108 of the U.S. Copyright Act (17 USC §108, as revised by P.L. 94-553) does not require the AMS’s permission. Republication, systematic reproduction, posting in electronic form on servers, or other uses of this material, except as exempted by the above statement, requires written permission or a license from the AMS. Additional details are provided in the AMS Copyright Policy, available on the AMS Web site located at (http://www.ametsoc.org/AMS) or from the AMS at 617-227-2425 or [email protected] Global Land–Atmosphere Coupling Experiment (GLACE) is a model intercomparison study focusing on a typically neglected yet critical element of numerical weather and climate modeling: land–atmosphere coupling strength, or the degree to which anomalies in land surface state (e.g., soil moisture) can affect rainfall generation and other atmospheric processes. The 12 AGCM groups participating in GLACE performed a series of simple numerical experiments that allow the objective quantification of this element for boreal summer. The derived coupling strengths vary widely. Some similarity, however, is found in the spatial patterns generated by the models, with enough similarity to pinpoint multimodel “hot spots” of land–atmosphere coupling. For boreal summer, such hot spots for precipitation and temperature are found over large regions of Africa, central North America, and India; a hot spot for temperature is also found over eastern China. The design of the GLACE simulations are described in full detail so that any interested modeling group can repeat them easily and thereby place their model’s coupling strength within the broad range of those documented here

Diversity and Functional Traits of Lichens in Ultramafic Areas: A Literature Based Worldwide Analysis Integrated by Field Data at the Regional Scale

While higher plant communities found on ultramafics are known to display peculiar characteristics, the distinguishability of any peculiarity in lichen communities is still a matter of contention. Other biotic or abiotic factors, rather than substrate chemistry, may contribute to differences in species composition reported for lichens on adjacent ultramafic and non-ultramafic areas. This work examines the lichen biota of ultramafics, at global and regional scales, with reference to species-specific functional traits. An updated world list of lichens on ultramafic substrates was analyzed to verify potential relationships between diversity and functional traits of lichens in different Köppen–Geiger climate zones. Moreover, a survey of diversity and functional traits in saxicolous communities on ultramafic and non-ultramafic substrates was conducted in Valle d’Aosta (North-West Italy) to verify whether a relationship can be detected between substrate and functional traits that cannot be explained by other environmental factors related to altitude. Analyses (unweighted pair group mean average clustering, canonical correspondence analysis, similarity-difference-replacement simplex approach) of global lichen diversity on ultramafic substrates (2314 reports of 881 taxa from 43 areas) displayed a zonal species distribution in different climate zones rather than an azonal distribution driven by the shared substrate. Accordingly, variations in the frequency of functional attributes reflected reported adaptations to the climate conditions of the different geographic areas. At the regional scale, higher similarity and lower species replacement were detected at each altitude, independent from the substrate, suggesting that altitude-related climate factors prevail over putative substrate–factors in driving community assemblages. In conclusion, data do not reveal peculiarities in lichen diversity or the frequency of functional traits in ultramafic areas

Cabauw Experimental Results from the Project for Intercomparison of Land-Surface Parameterization Schemes

In the Project for Intercomparison of Land-Surface Parameterization Schemes phase 2a experiment, meteorological data for the year 1987 from Cabauw, the Netherlands, were used as inputs to 23 land-surface flux schemes designed for use in climate and weather models. Schemes were evaluated by comparing their outputs with long-term measurements of surface sensible heat fluxes into the atmosphere and the ground, and of upward longwave radiation and total net radiative fluxes, and also comparing them with latent heat fluxes derived from a surface energy balance. Tuning of schemes by use of the observed flux data was not permitted. On an annual basis, the predicted surface radiative temperature exhibits a range of 2 K across schemes, consistent with the range of about 10 W m-2 in predicted surface net radiation. Most modeled values of monthly net radiation differ from the observations by less than the estimated maximum monthly observational error (±10 W m-2). However, modeled radiative surface temperature appears to have a systematic positive bias in most schemes; this might be explained by an error in assumed emissivity and by models' neglect of canopy thermal heterogeneity. Annual means of sensible and latent heat fluxes, into which net radiation is partitioned, have ranges across schemes of 30 W m-2 and 25 W m-2, respectively. Annual totals of evapotranspiration and runoff, into which the precipitation is partitioned, both have ranges of 315 mm. These ranges in annual heat and water fluxes were approximately halved upon exclusion of the three schemes that have no stomatal resistance under non-water-stressed conditions. Many schemes tend to underestimate latent heat flux and overestimate sensible heat flux in summer, with a reverse tendency in winter. For six schemes, root-mean-square deviations of predictions from monthly observations are less than the estimated upper bounds on observation errors (5 W m-2 for sensible heat flux and 10 W m-2 for latent heat flux). Actual runoff at the site is believed to be dominated by vertical drainage to groundwater, but several schemes produced significant amounts of runoff as overland flow or interflow. There is a range across schemes of 184 mm (40% of total pore volume) in the simulated annual mean root-zone soil moisture. Unfortunately, no measurements of soil moisture were available for model evaluation. A theoretical analysis suggested that differences in boundary conditions used in various schemes are not sufficient to explain the large variance in soil moisture. However, many of the extreme values of soil moisture could be explained in terms of the particulars of experimental setup or excessive evapotranspiration

Offline Implementation and Evaluation of the Canadian Small Lake Model with the Canadian Land Surface Scheme over Western Canada

Abstract The Canadian Small Lake Model (CSLM), version 2, was run with the Canadian Land Surface Scheme (CLASS), version 3.6.1, in an offline regional test over western Canada. Forcing data were derived from ERA-Interim and downscaled using the fifth-generation Canadian Regional Climate Model (CRCM5). The forcing precipitation field was adjusted using monthly data from the Canadian Gridded Temperature and Precipitation Anomalies (CANGRD) observation-based dataset. The modeled surface air temperature was evaluated against CANGRD data, the modeled albedo against MODIS data, and the modeled snow water equivalent against Canadian Meteorological Centre (CMC) and Global Snow Monitoring for Climate Research (GlobSnow) data. The lake simulation itself was evaluated using the Along Track Scanning Radiometer (ATSR) Reprocessing for Climate: Lake Surface Water Temperature and Ice Cover (ARC-Lake) dataset. Summer surface lake temperatures and the lake ice formation and breakup periods were well simulated, except for slight warm/cold summer/fall surface temperature biases, early ice breakup, and early ice formation, consistent with warm/cold biases in the climate simulation. Tests were carried out to investigate the sensitivity of the CSLM simulation to the default values assigned to the shortwave extinction coefficient and the average lake depth, and changing the former from 0.5 to 2.0 m−1 and the latter from 10.0 to 50.0 or 5.0 m had minimal effects on the simulation. Comparisons of the average annual variations of the simulated net shortwave radiation, turbulent fluxes, snowpack, and maximum and minimum daily surface temperatures between the land and the lake fractions for tundra, boreal, and southern regions showed patterns consistent with those expected. Finally, a test of the CSLM over the large resolved lakes in the model domain demonstrated a performance comparable to that for subgrid lakes.</jats:p