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Impact of Assimilating GOES-Derived Land Surface Variables into the PSU/NCAR MM5Land surface processes are known to have a profound impact on the overlying atmosphere over a wide range of spatial and temporal scales. Many atmospheric numerical models include special parameterizations to improve the specification and partitioning of surface fluxes which are critical to the accurate prediction of warm season boundary layer behavior, organized mesoscale circulations, and convective precipitation. However, the added degrees of freedom resulting from the inclusion of vegetation and soil schemes require the specification of additional surface parameters such as vegetative resistances, green vegetation fraction, leaf area index, soil physical and hydraulic characteristics, and the vertical distribution of soil moisture. As satellite data have become more readily available in recent years, many investigations have attempted to use these new measurements to infer missing components of the surface energy budget. Sensitivity studies have shown land-skin temperature (LST) tendencies during the mid-morning hours are strongly sensitive to the surface moisture availability (a function of soil wetness and vegetation) and less sensitive to other parameters such as surface roughness. Based upon results from these and other studies, developed a simple technique that dynamically assimilates Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES) derived land-surface products into the surface energy budget of a mesoscale model. The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate that assimilating the GOES satellite data has the potential to improve the representation of land surface characteristics within the model without prior knowledge of the land surface characteristics. The assimilation technique is presented in Section 2 and the numerical experiments are detailed in Section 3. Preliminary results and conclusions are presented in Sections 4 and 5, respectively.
Document ID
19990064525
Acquisition Source
Marshall Space Flight Center
Document Type
Reprint (Version printed in journal)
Authors
Lapenta, William M.
(NASA Marshall Space Flight Center Huntsville, AL United States)
Suggs, Ron
(NASA Marshall Space Flight Center Huntsville, AL United States)
Jedlovec, Gary
(NASA Marshall Space Flight Center Huntsville, AL United States)
McNider, Richard T.
(Alabama Univ. Huntsville, AL United States)
Date Acquired
August 19, 2013
Publication Date
January 1, 1999
Subject Category
Environment Pollution
Meeting Information
Meeting: Land Surface Modeling
Location: Boulder, CO
Country: United States
Start Date: June 21, 1999
End Date: June 25, 1999
Distribution Limits
Public
Copyright
Other

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