CAREER: Land-Atmosphere Coupling and Feedback in the Context of Climate Change

Ohio State University, The, Columbus OH

Investigators

Abstract

The interactions between the terrestrial land surface and the atmosphere are central to the Earth’s surface water, energy and carbon budgets. These interactions control a wide range of processes with a direct impact on humanity, including near-surface climate variability, cloud formation and precipitation. Land-atmosphere processes remain a significant challenge in large-scale weather and climate prediction due to their inherent complexity and the trans-disciplinary approach required to study them. Likewise, human activities that shape terrestrial landscapes such as deforestation and agricultural production directly impact the atmosphere in which they exist, resulting in the feedback of land surface functioning onto the surface conditions that are experienced. These interactions are rooted in the structure and function of the vegetation-soil systems at the land surface, and the ecological responses of these systems to atmospheric forcing. This project will integrate the development of novel high-resolution computer modeling tools and data analytical approaches with the rich information on plant responses to climate developed over decades of field system manipulation experiments to advance our understanding of how land-atmosphere interactions will evolve over the coming decades. This CAREER project will contribute to the development of the next generation of scientists and engineers who are technically equipped and motivated to study complex environmental systems to enable a sustainable future. The broader impacts of this project combine inter-disciplinary training of students at the undergraduate, graduate and high school levels. This award will advance our fundamental understanding of land-atmosphere interactions and feedback by: (1) developing high-fidelity 3D modeling tools for high-spatial and temporal resolution of land-atmosphere exchange processes and their consequent impacts on atmospheric development and land surface response; (2) utilizing new analytical approaches to diagnose land-atmosphere coupling and feedback in high resolution simulation output; (3) applying this new simulation platform to climate change scenarios across multiple vegetation and geographic domains. High resolution simulations of recent land-atmosphere interaction field campaigns will allow for validation of the simulation framework against observations of land-atmosphere carbon, water, energy and momentum fluxes, near surface climate variation, atmospheric boundary layer structure and cloud formation. Novel statistical tools will be used to quantify information flow, directionality and explicitly quantify feedback between surface and atmospheric states and fluxes. These tools will be used to analyze a suite of simulations designed to quantify the relative roles of vegetation structure, physiological and biochemical function, atmospheric state and the structure of the lower atmosphere on emergent land-atmosphere interactions and feedbacks. Overall this CAREER project will lead to a better understanding of how and why land-atmosphere interactions will change in the coming decades. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.