African Regional Climate-Land Surface Interactions: Evaluated from a Coupled Atmosphere--Dynamic Vegetation Model

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The project will improve our understanding of African land-surface conditions in evolution of regional climate at seasonal, interannual, and decadal time scales. In most previous modeling assessments, land-surface conditions were prescribed to their current or former states and their impact on African climate assessed using an atmospheric general circulation model (GCM). Dr. Xue will investigate climate--land-surface interactions using a two-way coupled model, in which vegetation responds to circulation as well. This is often referred to as "dynamic" vegetation modeling. Dr. Xue will incorporate a dynamic global vegetation model, called TRIFFID (Top-down Representation of Interactive Foliage and Flora Including Dynamics), within National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP)'s global and regional (eta) climate models and compare the evolution of simulated vegetation with recent satellite based high-resolution estimates of vegetation. The TRIFFID model was developed at the United Kingdom Meteorological Office, and Peter Cox, who was instrumental in its development, is collaborating with Dr. Xue on this project. The project is unique in its coupling of a comprehensive model of the atmosphere, such as the NCEP GCM or eta model, to a dynamic vegetation model.The Large-scale Dynamic Meteorology (LDM/ATM), Climate Dynamics (CDP/ATM), and the Hydrologic Sciences (HSP/EAR) programs in NSF's Geosciences directorate are funding this project.