Developments in a land surface scheme used for regional climate simulations in SWECLIM

摘要

During the latest years a number of more or less complicated coupled atmosphere-hydrology landsurface schemes (LSSs) have been presented The degree of complexity needed depends on the processes that must be described. The most important task for a surface scheme in a regional or global climate model is to correctly divide the net radiation available energy between sensible and latent heat fluxes. For this purpose it is mostly enough with 2-3 soil layers and 1-2 canopy layers. The global climate models are too coarse in horizontal resolution to be used as tools for strategic decisions due to changing climate effects on a regional scale. Therefore the Swedish Regional Climate Modelling Programme (SWECLIM) was initiated to study the future climate in the Nordic European region for horizontal resolutions down to 22X22 km~2 (see http://www.smhi.se/sgn0106/rossby/).