Research

Systematic Development of a Sub-grid Scaling Framework to Improve Land Simulation
Agency: DOE (Department of Energy)
This project focuses on improvements to the land model through current collaborations with Yong-Jiu Dai of Beijing Normal University (BNU), the lead in the development of the initial CLM, and other colleagues. Over the last year we have worked toward completion of our development of a treatment of 3D canopy radiation, a primary focus of our current proposal that is intended to go into the next version of the land model, CLM 5.

Improving the Coupling between Soil Moisture and Precipitation over North America through Integrated Observational and Modeling Approaches
Agency: NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration)
This project has been focused on establishing the space and time variability of soil moisture and its coupling to ET and precipitation using observations and comparing the statistical features of the measurements with climate model results in order to identify model deficits and to provide better tools for seasonal to interannual forecasting.

The Role of Vegetation, Aerosols & Surface Fluxes for Land-Atmosphere Feedbacks
Agency: NSF (National Science Foundation)
Our work involves improvement of the understanding of the land-atmosphere coupling, in particular the interactions between soil moisture, vegetation, aerosols, cloud cover, and precipitation. Four linked hypothesis were initially proposed to be addressed through observational and modeling studies. They were; i) changing properties of vegetation modify boundary layer cloud cover and precipitation; ii) aerosols connected to the land surface modify boundary layer cloud cover and precipitation, iii) changing land surface energy and water balances modify aerosol sources, cloud cover, and precipitation; and iv) changes in precipitation and cloud cover modify vegetation properties as well as directly modify the land surface energy and water balance.