Land-Ocean-Atmosphere Interactions over South America

Many crucial land processes occur on spatial scales too fine to be resolved by most current climate models. To better resolve these sub-grid scale processes, a model has been developed that represents them by a sub-mesh imposed on each atmospheric model grid, rather than the more common mosaic approach. This approach can easily incorporate sub-grid effects of radiation, topography, and rainfall, among others. The analysis of model simulation results will concentrate on the South American region with special emphasis on land-ocean-atmosphere interactions, and their sensitivity to sub-grid scale heterogeneities in land characteristics.