Limitations of WRF land surface models for simulating land use and land cover change in Sub-Saharan Africa and development of an improved model (CLM-AF v. 1.0)

Glotfelty, Timothy; Ramírez-Mejía, Diana; Bowden, Jared; Ghilardi, Adrian; West, J. Jason

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-14-3215-2021

Articles | Volume 14, issue 6

https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-14-3215-2021

© Author(s) 2021. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-14-3215-2021

© Author(s) 2021. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 14, issue 6

Development and technical paper

|

03 Jun 2021

Development and technical paper |

| 03 Jun 2021

Limitations of WRF land surface models for simulating land use and land cover change in Sub-Saharan Africa and development of an improved model (CLM-AF v. 1.0)

Timothy Glotfelty, Diana Ramírez-Mejía, Jared Bowden, Adrian Ghilardi, and J. Jason West

Supplement

https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-14-3215-2021-supplement

Data sets

Africa-Bioclimate Regions Timothy Glotfelty, Diana Ramírez-Mejía, Jared Bowden, Adrian Ghilardi, and J. Jason West https://doi.org/10.15139/S3/WHNILT

MODIS DinamicaEGO Land Use Data Timothy Glotfelty, Diana Ramírez-Mejía, Jared Bowden, Adrian Ghilardi, and J. Jason West https://doi.org/10.15139/S3/BEA55Z

Overview Information T. Glotfelty, D. Ramirez, J. Bowden, A. Ghilardi, and J. J. West https://doi.org/10.15139/S3/MQ8KNS

CRU TS4.01: Climatic Research Unit (CRU) Time-Series (TS) version 4.01 of high-resolution gridded data of month-by-month variation in climate (Jan. 1901-Dec. 2016) I. C. Harris and P. D. Jones https://doi.org/10.5285/58a8802721c94c66ae45c3baa4d814d0

MODIS Atmosphere L3 Monthly Product. NASA MODIS Adaptive Processing System S. Platnick https://doi.org/10.5067/MODIS/MOD08_M3.061

CERES Energy Balanced and Filled (EBAF) Surface Monthly means data in netCDF NASA/LARC/SD/ASDC https://doi.org/10.5067/TERRA+AQUA/CERES/EBAF-SURFACE_L3B004.0

CERES Energy Balanced and Filled (EBAF) TOA Monthly means data in netCDF Edition4.0 NASA/LARC/SD/ASDC https://doi.org/10.5067/TERRA+AQUA/CERES/EBAF-TOA_L3B004.0

TRMM (TMPA) Rainfall Estimate L3 3 hour 0.25 degree x 0.25 degree V7, Greenbelt, MD Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) https://doi.org/10.5067/TRMM/TMPA/3H/7

Model code and software

CLM-AF v 1.0 Code Timothy Glotfelty, Diana Ramírez-Mejía, Jared Bowden, Adrian Ghilardi, and J. Jason West https://doi.org/10.15139/S3/DZ7XS3

CLM-AF Updated Radiation Codes Timothy Glotfelty, Diana Ramírez-Mejía, Jared Bowden, Adrian Ghilardi, and J. Jason West https://doi.org/10.15139/S3/W2LWJV

Default WRF-CLM LAI Output Code Timothy Glotfelty, Diana Ramírez-Mejía, Jared Bowden, Adrian Ghilardi, and J. Jason West https://doi.org/10.15139/S3/JGIQOE

Short summary

Land use and land cover change is a major contributor to climate change in Africa. Here we document deficiencies in how a weather model represents the land surface of Africa and how we modify a common land surface model to overcome these deficiencies. Our tests reveal that the default weather model does not accurately predict and transition the properties of different African biomes and growing cycles. This paper demonstrates that our modified model addresses these limitations.