Open Access
Soil Moisture–Precipitation Feedback Processes in the Indian Summer Monsoon Season
Author(s) -
Shakeel Asharaf,
Andreas Dobler,
Bodo Ahrens
Publication year - 2012
Publication title -
journal of hydrometeorology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.733
H-Index - 123
eISSN - 1525-755X
pISSN - 1525-7541
DOI - 10.1175/jhm-d-12-06.1
Subject(s) - environmental science , precipitable water , precipitation , monsoon , evapotranspiration , water content , climatology , moisture , atmospheric sciences , meteorology , geology , geography , ecology , geotechnical engineering , biology
Soil moisture can influence precipitation through a feedback loop with land surface evapotranspiration. A series of numerical simulations, including soil moisture sensitivity experiments, have been performed for the Indian summer monsoon season (ISM). The simulations were carried out with the nonhydrostatic regional climate model Consortium for Small-Scale Modeling (COSMO) in climate mode (COSMO-CLM), driven by lateral boundary conditions derived from the ECMWF Interim reanalysis (ERA-Interim). Positive as well as negative feedback processes through local and remote effects are shown to be important. The regional moisture budget studies have exposed that changes in precipitable water and changes in precipitation efficiency vary in importance, in time, and in space in the simulations for India. Overall, the results show that the premonsoonal soil moisture has a significant influence on the monsoonal precipitation, and thus confirmed that modeling of soil moisture is essential for reliable simulation and forecasting of the ISM.