Thomas J. Phillips — Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
Category
Atmospheric State & Surface
Description
The scatter plot illustrates the covariation of daily averages of Climate Modeling Best Estimate observations of surface net total radiation and effective shortwave cloud albedo in May–August of 1997 to 2008 (color-coded by year) at the U.S. Southern Great Plains site.
This study investigates the features of land-atmosphere coupling during the May to August period, when it displays its greatest strength at the ARM Southern Great Plains (SGP) site. Following the perspective of boundary-layer meteorologist Alan Betts, the land-atmosphere coupling is manifested by covariances of surface moisture/energy fluxes and related variables, e.g., as illustrated by scatter plots (see figure). The ARM Climate Modeling Best Estimate (CMBE) data sets provide the required surface observations at hourly sampling intervals for the years 1997–2008, thus allowing the characteristics of the SGP land-atmosphere coupling to be analyzed in considerable detail. Initial results suggest that covariances among the surface radiative fluxes and atmospheric variables are more robust than those involving the turbulent fluxes or precipitation.
