Articles | Volume 7, issue 1
https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-7-1-2016
https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-7-1-2016
Research article
 | 
18 Jan 2016
Research article |  | 18 Jan 2016

Lifetime of soil moisture perturbations in a coupled land–atmosphere simulation

T. Stacke and S. Hagemann

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AC: Author comment | RC: Referee comment | SC: Short comment | EC: Editor comment
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AR: Author's response | RR: Referee report | ED: Editor decision
AR by Tobias Stacke on behalf of the Authors (17 Nov 2015)  Author's response    Manuscript
ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (21 Nov 2015) by Raghavan Krishnan
RR by Anonymous Referee #1 (01 Dec 2015)
ED: Publish as is (06 Dec 2015) by Raghavan Krishnan
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Short summary
This study evaluates the lifetime of soil moisture perturbations using an atmosphere-land GCM. We find memory of up to 9 months for root zone soil moisture. Interactions with other surface states result in significant but short-lived anomalies in surface temperature and more stable anomalies in leaf carbon content. As these anomalies can recur repeatedly, e.g. due to interactions with a deep-soil moisture reservoir, we conclude that soil moisture initialization may impact climate predictions.
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