Improvement of Soil Moisture Simulation in Eurasia by the Beijing Climate Center Climate System Model from CMIP5 to CMIP6

摘要

This study provides a comprehensive evaluation of historical surface soil moisture simulation(1979-2012)over Eurasia at annual and seasonal time scales between two medium-resolution versions of the Beijing Climate Center Climate System Model(BCC-CSM)—one that is currently participating in phase 6 of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project(CMIP6),i.e.,BCC-CSM2-MR,and the other,BCC-CSM1.1m,which participated in CMIP5.We show that BCC-CSM2-MR is more skillful in reproducing the climate mean states and standard deviations of soil moisture,with pattern correlations increased and biases reduced significantly.BCC-CSM2-MR performs better in capturing the first two primary patterns of soil moisture anomalies,where the period of the corresponding time series is closer to that of reference data.Comparisons show that BCC-CSM2-MR performs at a high level among multiple models of CMIP6 in terms of centered pattern correlation and“amplitude of variation”(relative standard deviation).In general,the centered pattern correlation of BCC-CSM2-MR,ranging from 0.61 to 0.87,is higher than the multi-model mean of CMIP6,and the relative standard deviation is 0.75,which surmounts the overestimations in most of the CMIP6 models.Due to the vital role played by precipitation in land-atmosphere interaction,possible causes of the improvement of soil moisture simulation are further related to precipitation in BCC-CSM2-MR.The results indicate that a better description of the relationship between soil moisture and precipitation and a better reproduction of the climate mean precipitation by the model may result in the improved performance of soil moisture simulation.