Sensitivity analysis of Aerodynamic Roughness Length on Surface Air Temperature in Eastern China

DOI

10.2991/rsete.2013.182How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Aerodynamic roughness length, RAMS, Regional climate modeling

Abstract

Aerodynamic roughness length is an important surface parameter that influences energy and water exchanges at the land-atmosphere interface, thereby affects regional climate. This study is to investigate the sensitivity of aerodynamic roughness length on climate in Eastern China, which has been experiencing the fast process of urbanization during the past 30 years. Regional Atmospheric Modeling System (RAMS) was used to perform a series of one-year simulations over Eastern China. Six sensitivity tests were conducted by changing vegetation roughness length with ±10%, ±50 ,±90 and compared to a control run with the model's 'default' parameterization of roughness length. The results show that as the magnitudes of roughness length changes increase, surface air temperature has more distinctive responses. More localized changes occur in the Southeast China than Northeast China, corresponding to the more varied vegetation covers in the south. Besides, surface air temperatures of different land covers have different sensitivity to aerodynamic roughness length. Domain averaged surface air temperature has a negative response to the changes of roughness length. With 90% of changes in roughness length, for mixed croplands, the differences of surface air temperature between sensitivity and control tests have a positive maximum around 0.7 k, and a negative maximum near -0.4 k in summer. While for short grassland, the positive maximum is around 0.2 k and the negative maximum is about -0.4 k. Thus, the need to realistically represent both the spatial and temporal distribution of vegetation roughness length in regional climate models is highlighted.

Copyright

© 2013, the Authors. Published by Atlantis Press.

Open Access

This is an open access article distributed under the CC BY-NC license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/).

Download article (PDF)

TY  - CONF
AU  - Zuo Jingying
AU  - Qi Yuanyuan
AU  - Lu Lixin
PY  - 2013/08
DA  - 2013/08
TI  - Sensitivity analysis of Aerodynamic Roughness Length on Surface Air Temperature in Eastern China
BT  - Proceedings of the 2013 the International Conference on Remote Sensing, Environment and Transportation Engineering (RSETE 2013)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 750
EP  - 753
SN  - 1951-6851
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/rsete.2013.182
DO  - 10.2991/rsete.2013.182
ID  - Jingying2013/08
ER  -