Land-climate interactions play a key role in the climate system. The land’s role in the climate system – its impact on atmospheric means and variability across a broad range of timescales, ranging from hours to centuries, for past, present, and future climates – has been the subject of much recent exploratory research. The meteorological, hydrological, biophysical, biogeochemical, ecosystem processes and the boundary-layer processes that underlie the connections between climate and soil moisture, soil temperature, vegetation, snow, and frozen soil, however, are not yet fully understood. The scarcity of relevant observations, the complexity of the underlying processes and feedbacks, and the wide range of scales involved make the necessary investigations challenging. This session focuses on (1) interfaces between climate, ecosystems, and the land branches of the energy, water, and carbon cycles and the impact of land processes on climate variability and change as well as on extreme events (such as droughts and flooding); (2) dynamic, physical, and biogeochemical mechanisms by which the land surface (e.g., soil moisture and temperature, albedo, snow, frozen soil, vegetation) influences atmospheric processes and climate; (3) predictability associated with land-surface/atmosphere/ocean interaction and land initialization; (4) impacts of land-cover and land use change on climate; (5) land-climate interactions in the context of climate variability and change, and (6) application and analyses of large scale field data and observational networks (such as FLUXNET) for land/atmosphere studies.. Please contact the program organizer, Mike Ek (Michael.Ek@noaa.gov) for additional information.
J17.6
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