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Impact of modified soil thermal characteristic on the simulated monsoon climate over south Asia

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In the present study, the influence of soil thermal characteristics (STC) on the simulated monsoon climate over south Asia is analyzed. The study was motivated by a common warm temperature bias over the plains of northern India that has been noticed in several global and regional climate models. To address this warm bias and its relation to STC, two sensitivity experiments have been performed with the regional climate model REMO of the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology. The control experiment uses the standard soil thermal characteristic of the model that corresponds to a moist soil. The second experiment uses modified STC that characterize a dry soil, which is more representative of the considered region, as a large part of the region has arid, semi-arid or subtropical summer wet conditions. Both experiments were conducted over 20 years using re-analysis data as lateral boundary conditions. Results show that using the modified STC the predominant regional warm bias has reduced substantially, leading to a better and more realistic surface temperature compared to observations over south Asia. Although, the magnitude of bias has reduced, the warm bias still exists over the region suggesting that other atmospheric and land surface processes also play a role, such as aerosols and irrigation. These need to be addressed adequately in future modeling studies over the region.

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Acknowledgements

This research was undertaken as part of the Integrated Project called ‘HighNoon: Adaptation to changing water resources availability in Northern India with Himalayan glacier retreat and changing monsoon’. This project is funded by the European Commission, FP7, and contract number 227087. The authors acknowledge German Climate Computing Center (DKRZ) providing CPU time for REMO simulations. They also thank Tanja Blome from MPI-M for helpful discussions on soil temperature processes and their parameterization.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Max Planck Institute for Meteorology, Hamburg, Germany

    Pankaj Kumar, Ralf Podzun**, Stefan Hagemann & Daniela Jacob

  2. Climate Service Center, Hamburg, Germany

    Daniela Jacob

Authors
  1. Pankaj Kumar
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  2. Ralf Podzun**
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  3. Stefan Hagemann
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  4. Daniela Jacob
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Correspondence to Pankaj Kumar.

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**Since deceased.

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Kumar, P., Podzun**, R., Hagemann, S. et al. Impact of modified soil thermal characteristic on the simulated monsoon climate over south Asia. J Earth Syst Sci 123, 151–160 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12040-013-0381-0

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