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Soil Moisture Effects on Afternoon Precipitation Occurrence in Current Climate Models
Author(s) -
Moon Heewon,
Guillod Benoit P.,
Gudmundsson Lukas,
Seneviratne Sonia I.
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
geophysical research letters
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.007
H-Index - 273
eISSN - 1944-8007
pISSN - 0094-8276
DOI - 10.1029/2018gl080879
Subject(s) - environmental science , precipitation , spatial heterogeneity , climatology , spatial ecology , homogeneous , spatial variability , atmospheric sciences , moisture , water content , temporal scales , climate model , persistence (discontinuity) , climate change , meteorology , geology , ecology , mathematics , geography , statistics , oceanography , geotechnical engineering , combinatorics , biology
Soil moisture‐precipitation feedbacks in a large ensemble of global climate model simulations are evaluated. A set of three metrics are used to assess the sensitivity of afternoon rainfall occurrence to morning soil moisture in terms of their spatial, temporal, and heterogeneity characteristics. Positive (negative) spatial feedback indicates that the afternoon rainfall occurs more frequently over wetter (drier) land surface than its surroundings. Positive (negative) temporal feedback indicates preference over temporally wetter (drier) conditions, and positive (negative) heterogeneity feedback indicates preference over more spatially heterogeneous (homogeneous) soil moisture conditions. We confirm previous results highlighting a dominantly positive spatial feedback in the models as opposed to observations. On average, models tend to agree better with observations for temporal and heterogeneity feedback characteristics, although intermodel variability is largest for these metrics. The collective influence of the three feedbacks suggests that they may lead to more localized precipitation persistence in models than in observations.