The Land Surface Scheme ISBA within the Météo-France Climate Model ARPEGE. Part I. Implementation and Preliminary Results

Abstract

This paper describes recent developments in climate modeling at Météo-France related to land surface processes. The implementation of a simple land surface parameterization, Interactions between Soil Biosphere Atmosphere (ISBA), has gained from previous validations and calibrations at local scale against field datasets and from aggregation procedures devised to define effective land surface properties. Specific improvements for climate purposes are introduced: spatial variability of convective rainfall in canopy drainage estimation and subsurface gravitational percolation. The methodology used to derive climatological maps of land surface parameters at the grid-scale resolution of the model from existing database for soil and vegetation types at global scale is described. A 3-yr integration for the present day climate with a T42L30 version of the climate model has been performed. Results obtained compare favorably with available observed climatologies related to the various components of the continental surface energy and water budgets. Differences are due mostly to a poor simulation of the precipitation field. However, some differences suggest specific improvements in the surface scheme concerning representation of the bare soil albedo, the surface runoff, and the soil moisture initialization. As a first step prior to tropical deforestation experiments presented in Part II, regional analyses over the Amazon forest indicate that the modeled evaporation and net radiation are in good agreement with data collected during the Amazon Region Micrometeorological Experiment campaign.