An Analysis of Soil Moisture-Precipitation Feedback Using the North American Regional Reanalysis Dataset

Soil moisture-precipitation feedback is crucial in understanding land-atmosphere interactions. A lack of observations of soil moisture and precipitation at the same spatial scale makes it difficult to quantify the feedback and determine the proper spatial scale that this feedback mechanism takes place. The goal of this study is to portray soil moisture-precipitation feedback at multiple spatial scales across the continental United States using the North American Regional Reanalysis (NARR) dataset. Following the framework established by Findell and Eltahir in 2003, the convective triggering potential (CTP), low-level humidity index (HI), and soil moisture conditions from the morning hours (approx. 8am local time), as well as afternoon convective precipitation, will be used to assess the soil moisture-precipitation relationship depicted by the NARR dataset. How this relationship varies across the study domain and how it varies with spatial scales will be presented.