10.2
The effects Amazonian Deforestation on Local and Global Climate
David Werth, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ; and R. Avissar
s. General circulation models (GCMs) are typically used to simulate hydrometeorological processes at the seasonal-to-interannual time scales. However, these models are not equipped to simulate the microscale and mesoscale land-atmosphere interactions expected to be very important in Amazonia, where convective clouds and precipitation play a key role. This is because their grid resolution is much lower than the spatial scale of convection, and than the landscape heterogeneity resulting from land use / land cover change in Amazonia. To improve the quality of hydrometeorological scenarios at the seasonal-to-interannual time scales, it is crucial to bridge the gap between these scales. For this purpose, we nested a state-of-the-art regional climate model validated with observations collected as part of the Large-Scale Biosphere Atmosphere (LBA) Experiment within a state-of-the-art GCM. This two-way interactive coupled model offers the unique capability of simulating explicitly (at a high resolution) convection and precipitation in Amazonia, as well as their effects on the general circulation. An ensemble of multi-year simulations for various scenarios of land use / land cover change was produced. Because this type of coupled model has a time step of integration of the order of minutes, we can study with it the hydrometeorological processes that it simulates at time scales varying from hours to year
Session 10, Regional Climate and Hydrological Applications:Amazonia (Parallel with Sessions 9a and 9c)
Tuesday, 6 April 1999, 10:30 AM-11:30 AM
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