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Climate?Csoil?Cvegetation control on groundwater table dynamics and its feedbacks in a climate model |
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| Authors: | L Ruby Leung Maoyi Huang Yun Qian Xu Liang |
| Institution: | 1. Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Richland, WA, USA 2. University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA, USA 3. State Key Laboratory of Hydraulics and Mountain River Engineering, Sichuan University, Chengdu, China |
| Abstract: | Among the three dynamically linked branches of the water cycle, including atmospheric, surface, and subsurface water, groundwater is the largest reservoir and an active component of the hydrologic system. Because of the inherent slow response time, groundwater may be particularly relevant for long time-scale processes such as multi-years or decadal droughts. This study uses regional climate simulations with and without surface water?Cgroundwater interactions for the conterminous US to assess the influence of climate, soil, and vegetation on groundwater table dynamics, and its potential feedbacks to regional climate. Analyses show that precipitation has a dominant influence on the spatial and temporal variations of groundwater table depth (GWT). The simulated GWT is found to decrease sharply with increasing precipitation. Our simulation also shows some distinct spatial variations that are related to soil porosity and hydraulic conductivity. Vegetation properties such as minimum stomatal resistance, and root depth and fraction are also found to play an important role in controlling the groundwater table. Comparing two simulations with and without groundwater table dynamics, we find that groundwater table dynamics mainly influences the partitioning of soil water between the surface (0?C0.5?m) and subsurface (0.5?C5?m) rather than total soil moisture. In most areas, groundwater table dynamics increases surface soil moisture at the expense of the subsurface, except in regions with very shallow groundwater table. The change in soil water partitioning between the surface and subsurface is found to strongly correlate with the partitioning of surface sensible and latent heat fluxes. The evaporative fraction (EF) is generally higher during summer when groundwater table dynamics is included. This is accompanied by increased cloudiness, reduced diurnal temperature range, cooler surface temperature, and increased cloud top height. Although both convective and non-convective precipitation are enhanced, the higher EF changes the partitioning to favor more non-convective precipitation, but this result could be sensitive to the convective parameterization used. Compared to simulations without groundwater table dynamics, the dry bias in the summer precipitation is slightly reduced over the central and eastern US Groundwater table dynamics can provide important feedbacks to atmospheric processes, and these feedbacks are stronger in regions with deeper groundwater table, because the interactions between surface and subsurface are weak when the groundwater table is deep. This increases the sensitivity of surface soil moisture to precipitation anomalies, and therefore enhances land surface feedbacks to the atmosphere through changes in soil moisture and evaporative fraction. By altering the groundwater table depth, land use change and groundwater withdrawal can alter land surface response and feedback to the climate system. |
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