The atmosphere-land coupled simulations showed that greatest changes in surface temperature and radiation fluxes occurred over the U.S. Great Plains, some regions of India, Ukraine, and southern Yemen, as a result of the stem-root flow. However, the responses may be different than that found in the offline mode in some of the places. For instance, Ukraine and southern Yemen region experienced increasing soil moisture in the top layer. These nonlinear responses are mainly due to dynamic feedbacks which altered the atmospheric circulation, precipitation, and evapotranspiration. Therefore, soil-precipitation feedback mechanism includes local and regional effects. Also, changes in heat flux can alert convection and thus precipitation, which in return controlling the capacity of evapotranspiration. For example, the increase in summer time precipitation over the Ukraine region is largely due to the higher moist static energy with higher latent heat flux associated with increased top-soil moisture; whereas in Yemen, the changes in horizontal temperature gradient can trigger the convergence and, as a result, an enhancement in precipitation. Further investigation is needed to fully understand the causality of soil-precipitation relationship associated with the stem-root flow mechanism.
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