The CTP-HIlow framework for describing atmospheric controls on soil moisture–boundary layer interactions is described in a companion paper, Part I. In this paper, the framework is applied to the continental United States to investigate how differing atmospheric regimes influence local feedbacks between the land surface and the atmosphere. The framework was developed with a one-dimensional bound...

It is now well-established that the chaotic nature of the atmosphere severely limits the predictability of weather, while the slowly varying sea surface temperature (SST) and land surface states can enhance the predictability of atmospheric variations through surfaceatmosphere interactions or by providing a boundary condition (e.g., Shukla 1993, 1998; Shukla et al. 2000; Graham et al. 1994; Kos...

[1] Past studies have suggested that increasing atmospheric CO2 will lead to a significant reduction of soil moisture during summer in the extratropics. These studies showed an increase in wintertime rainfall over most mid-latitude continental regions when CO2 is doubled, an earlier snowmelt season and onset of springtime evaporation, and a higher ratio of evaporation to precipitation in summer...

The mean annual moisture flux across 60øS is estimated using results of numerical analyses produced by the U.S. National Centers for Environmental Prediction a d the European Centre for Medium-Range W ather Forecasts for the 7-year period 1985-1991. The atmospheric data indicate a net poleward transport of 17.06 kg m -1 s -1 or 10.74 Tt yr -1. The mean annual moisture transport divergence for t...

Sources of spring predictability of the hydrological system over France were studied on a seasonal time scale over the 1960–2005 period. Two random sampling experiments were set up in order to test the relative importance of the land surface initial state and the atmospheric forcing. The experiments were based on the SAFRAN-ISBA-MODCOU hydrometeorological suite which computed soil moisture and ...

Long wave radiation (LWR) forcing is determined in atmospheric global climate models (AGCMs) by a heating algorithm embedded in the model. These algorithms compute vertical heating rate (HR) profiles from profiles of temperature (T), moisture (Q), clouds, and minor atmospheric constituents; thus the HRs depend on the vertical structure of the input variables plus internal physics. The sensitivi...

MODerate resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) Aerosol Optical Thickness (AOT) and the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) atmospheric profiles (temperature and moisture) Level 2 products are studied to investigate dust aerosols impacts on hurricanes through spatial analysis. Spatial regions were selected based on two concentric circles (an annulus) and segmented by left and right region...

Coastal droughts that simultaneously affect California, Oregon, and Washington are rare, but they have extensive and severe impacts (e.g., wildfire and agriculture). To better understand these events, historical observations are used to investigate 1) drought variability along the Pacific coast of the contiguous United States and 2) years when extreme drought affects the entire coast. The leadi...