Return to search

A Systematic Evaluation of Noah-MP in Simulating Land-Atmosphere Energy, Water, and Carbon Exchanges Over the Continental United States

Accurate simulation of energy, water, and carbon fluxes exchanging between the land surface and the atmosphere is beneficial for improving terrestrial ecohydrological and climate predictions. We systematically assessed the Noah land surface model (LSM) with mutiparameterization options (Noah-MP) in simulating these fluxes and associated variations in terrestrial water storage (TWS) and snow cover fraction (SCF) against various reference products over 18 United States Geological Survey two-digital hydrological unit code regions of the continental United States (CONUS). In general, Noah-MP captures better the observed seasonal and interregional variability of net radiation, SCF, and runoff than other variables. With a dynamic vegetation model, it overestimates gross primary productivity by 40% and evapotranspiration (ET) by 22% over the whole CONUS domain; however, with a prescribed climatology of leaf area index, it greatly improves ET simulation with relative bias dropping to 4%. It accurately simulates regional TWS dynamics in most regions except those with large lakes or severely affected by irrigation and/or impoundments. Incorporating the lake water storage variations into the modeled TWS variations largely reduces the TWS simulation bias more obviously over the Great Lakes with model efficiency increasing from 0.18 to 0.76. Noah-MP simulates runoff well in most regions except an obvious overestimation (underestimation) in the Rio Grande and Lower Colorado (New England). Compared with North American Land Data Assimilation System Phase 2 (NLDAS-2) LSMs, Noah-MP shows a better ability to simulate runoff and a comparable skill in simulating R-n but a worse skill in simulating ET over most regions. This study suggests that future model developments should focus on improving the representations of vegetation dynamics, lake water storage dynamics, and human activities including irrigation and impoundments.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:arizona.edu/oai:arizona.openrepository.com:10150/626444
Date27 November 2017
CreatorsMa, Ning, Niu, Guo-Yue, Xia, Youlong, Cai, Xitian, Zhang, Yinsheng, Ma, Yaoming, Fang, Yuanhao
ContributorsUniv Arizona, Dept Hydrol & Atmospher Sci, Key Laboratory of Tibetan Environment Changes and Land Surface Processes; Institute of Tibetan Plateau Research, and Center for Excellence in Tibetan Plateau Earth Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences; Beijing China, Department of Hydrology and Atmospheric Sciences; University of Arizona; Tucson AZ USA, Environmental Modeling Center, National Centers for Environmental Prediction; College Park MD USA, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering; Princeton University; Princeton NJ USA, Key Laboratory of Tibetan Environment Changes and Land Surface Processes; Institute of Tibetan Plateau Research, and Center for Excellence in Tibetan Plateau Earth Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences; Beijing China, Key Laboratory of Tibetan Environment Changes and Land Surface Processes; Institute of Tibetan Plateau Research, and Center for Excellence in Tibetan Plateau Earth Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences; Beijing China, Department of Hydrology and Water Resources; Hohai University; Nanjing China
PublisherAMER GEOPHYSICAL UNION
Source SetsUniversity of Arizona
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeArticle
Rights©2017. American Geophysical Union. All Rights Reserved.
Relationhttp://doi.wiley.com/10.1002/2017JD027597

Page generated in 0.0022 seconds