Land-atmosphere interactions play a critical role in determining the diurnal evolution of both planetary boundary layer (PBL) and land surface temperature and moisture states. The strength of coupling between the land surface and PBL in numerical weather prediction and climate models remains largely unexplored and undiagnosed due to the complex interactions and feedbacks present across a range of scales. In this study, a framework for diagnosing local land-atmosphere coupling (LoCo) at the process-level is presented using a coupled mesoscale model with a suite of PBL and land surface model (LSM) options along with observations from the U. S. Southern Great Plains. Specifically, the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model has been coupled to NASA's Land Information System (LIS), which provides a flexible and high-resolution representation and initialization of land surface physics and states. Coupling diagnostics based on the evolution of near-surface temperature and humidity are examined along with the sensitivity of a range of PBL-LSM combinations to perturbations in soil moisture. Ultimately, this work provides a testbed to study factors controlling LoCo using the LIS-WRF system, in an effort to develop and evaluate coupling diagnostics within the community.
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