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American Geophysical Union, Geophysical Research Letters, 8(51), 2024

DOI: 10.1029/2023gl108090

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Observation and Reanalysis Derived Relationships Between Cloud and Land Surface Fluxes Across Cumulus and Stratiform Coupling Over the Southern Great Plains

Journal article published in 2024 by Tianning Su ORCID, Zhanqing Li ORCID, Yunyan Zhang, Youtong Zheng ORCID, Haipeng Zhang ORCID
This paper was not found in any repository, but could be made available legally by the author.
This paper was not found in any repository, but could be made available legally by the author.

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Abstract

AbstractUnderstanding interactions between low clouds and land surface fluxes is critical to comprehending Earth's energy balance, yet their relationships remain elusive, with discrepancies between observations and modeling. Leveraging long‐term field observations over the Southern Great Plains, this investigation revealed that cloud‐land interactions are closely connected to cloud‐land coupling regimes. Observational evidence supports a dual‐mode interaction: coupled stratiform clouds predominate in low sensible heat scenarios, while coupled cumulus clouds dominate in high sensible heat scenarios. Reanalysis data sets, MERRA‐2 and ERA‐5, obscure this dichotomy owing to a shortfall in representing boundary layer clouds, especially in capturing the initiation of coupled cumulus in high sensible heat scenarios. ERA‐5 demonstrates a relatively closer alignment with observational data, particularly in capturing relationships between cloud frequency and latent heat, markedly outperforming MERRA‐2. Our study underscores the necessity of distinguishing different cloud coupling regimes, essential to the understanding of their interactions for advancing land‐atmosphere interactions.