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The use of river runoff to test CSIRO9 land surface scheme in the Amazon and Mississippi River Basins
Author(s) -
Arora V.K.,
Chiew F.H.S.,
Grayson R.B.
Publication year - 2000
Publication title -
international journal of climatology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.58
H-Index - 166
eISSN - 1097-0088
pISSN - 0899-8418
DOI - 10.1002/1097-0088(200008)20:10<1077::aid-joc517>3.0.co;2-t
Subject(s) - amazon rainforest , surface runoff , environmental science , hydrology (agriculture) , climatology , drainage basin , surface water , geography , geology , cartography , ecology , geotechnical engineering , biology , environmental engineering
Point validation of land surface schemes in general circulation models (GCMs) can only provide limited insight into the performance of the schemes when used over the large GCM grid cells. Streamflow, which integrates information over large areas, is a potentially useful diagnostic for assessing the land surface schemes at large spatial scales. This paper discusses the use of streamflow for assessing the performance of the CSIRO9 land surface scheme over the Amazon and the Mississippi River Basins. The paper shows that although streamflow can be a useful diagnostic tool for testing land surface schemes over large scales its utility is undermined by various problems: the atmospheric control on evapotranspiration, the possibility of compensating errors within large basins, and most importantly the lack of reliable grid‐averaged atmospheric data at large spatial scales. Copyright © 2000 Royal Meteorological Society