Role of land surface description for regional climate modeling

The enhanced version of BATS (en-BATS), developed for seasonal climate modeling with the FSU Nested Regional Spectral Model, has been used for land surface sensitivity studies over the eastern United States. The impacts of seasonal vegetation variations, soil state initialization techniques, and choice of land surface datasets will be investigated within the context of the numerical model. The question of what horizontal scales of land surface variations are of significance to simulated monthly means of meteorological conditions will be addressed based on the cases examined, including how such scale dependence may vary according to location and season.