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Engineering topics

Pielke, Roger

Publications and source records attributed to Pielke, Roger.

Coupled land surface/hydrologic/atmospheric models

The topics covered include the following: prototype land cover characteristics data base for the conterminous United States; surface evapotranspiration effects on cumulus convection and implications for mesoscale models; the use of complex treatment of surface hydrology and thermodynamics within a mesoscale model and some related issues; initialization of soil-water content for regional-scale atmospheric prediction models; impact of surface properties on dryline and MCS evolution; a numerical simulation of heavy precipitation over the complex topography of California; representing mesoscale fluxes induced by landscape discontinuities in global climate models; emphasizing the role of subgrid-scale heterogeneity in surface-air interaction; and problems with modeling and measuring biosphere-atmosphere exchanges of energy, water, and carbon on large scales.

Pielke, Roger↗

Session on coupled land surface/hydrological/atmospheric models

The current model capabilities in the context of land surface interactions with the atmosphere include only one-dimensional characteristics of vegetation and soil surface heat, moisture, momentum, and selected other trace gas fluxes (e.g., CO2). The influence of spatially coherent fluxes that result from landscape heterogeneity were not included. Valuable representations of several aspects of the landscape pattern currently exist. These include digital elevation data and measures of the leaf area index (i.e., Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) from Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) data). A major deficiency, however, is the lack of an ability to sample spatially representative shallow and (especially) deep soil moisture. Numerous mesoscale modeling and observed studies demonstrated the sensitivity of planetary boundary layer structure and deep convection to the magnitude of the surface moisture flux.

Pielke, Roger↗