Sensitivity of a general circulation model to land surface parameters in African tropical deforestation experiments

During the last two decades, several land surface schemes for use in climate, regional and/or mesoscale, hydrological and ecological models have been designed. Incorrect parametrization of land-surface processes and prescription of the surface parameters in atmospheric modeling, can result in artificial changes of the horizontal gradient of the sensible heat flux. Thus, an error in horizontal temperature gradient within the lower atmosphere may be introduced. The reliability of the model depends on the quality of boundary layer scheme implemented and its sensitivity to the bare soil and vegetation parameters. In this study, a series of sensitivity experiments has been conducted over broad time scales, using a version of the ARPEGE Climate Model coupled to the ISBA land surface scheme in order to investigate model sensitivity to separate changes in land surface parameters over Africa. Effects of perturbing vegetation cover, distribution of soil depth, albedo of vegetation, roughness length, leaf area index and minimum stomatal resistance were explored by using a simple statistical analysis. Identifying which parameters are important in controlling turbulent energy fluxes, temperature and soil moisture is dependent on which variables are used to determine sensibility, which type of vegetation and climate regime is being simulated and the magnitude and sign of the parameter change. This study does not argue that a particular parameter is important in ISBA, rather it shows that no general ranking of parameters is possible. So, it is essential to specify all land surface parameters with greater precision when attempting to determine the climate response to modification of the land surface. The implication of ISBA being sensitive to parameters that cannot be validated suggests that there will always be considerable doubt over the predictive quality of land-surface schemes.