A Revised Land Surface Parameterization (SiB2) for GCMS. Part III: The Greening of the Colorado State University General Circulation Model

SiB2, the second-generation land-surface parameterization developed by Sellers et al., has been incorporated into the Colorado State University general circulation model and tested in multidecade simulation. The control run uses a “bucket” hydrology but employs the same surface albedo and surface roughness distributions as the SiB2 run. Results show that SiB2 leads to a general warming of the continents, as evidenced in the ground temperature, surface air temperature, and boundary-layer-mean potential temperature. The surface sensible heat flux increases and the latent heat flux decreases. This warming occurs virtually everywhere but is most spectacular over Siberia in winter. Precipitation generally decreases over land but increases in the monsoon regions, especially the Amazon basin in January and equatorial Africa and Southeast Asia in July. Evaporation decreases considerably, especially in dry regions such as the Sahara. The excess of precipitation over evaporation increases in the monsoon regions. The precipitable water (vertically integrated water vapor content) generally decreases over land but increases in the monsoon regions. The mixing ratio of the boundary-layer air decreases over newly all continental areas, however, including the monsoon regions. The average (composite) maximum boundary-layer depth over the diurnal cycle increases in the monsoon regions, as does the average PBL turbulence kinetic energy. The average boundary-layer wind speed also increases over most continental regions. Groundwater content generally increases in rainy regions and decreases in dry regions, so that SiB2 has a tendency to increase its spatial variability. SiB2 leas to a general reduction of cloudiness over land. The net surface longwave cooling of the surface increases quite dramatically over land, in accordance with the increased surface temperatures and decreased cloudiness. The solar radiation absorbed at the ground also increases. SiB2 has modest effects on the simulated general circulation of the atmosphere. Its most important impacts on the model are to improve the simulations of surface temperature and snow cover and to enable the simulation of the net rate of terrestrial carbon assimilation