Contribution of land-atmosphere coupling in 2022 CONUS compound drought-heatwave events and implications for forecasting

Abstract

Severe compound drought-heatwave events were observed over three regions of the Contiguous United States (CONUS), Northwest (NW), Great Plains (GP), and Northeast (NE) regions, during July and August 2022. In this study, we have found that the developments of these drought-heatwave events were shaped by different land-atmosphere coupling behaviors which are associated with water and energy limitation regimes in these regions. In the NW and GP regions, the surface soil moisture (SM) and evapotranspiration (ET) were coupled through water-limited processes. Heatwaves in these two regions were affected by the decrease of ET and the available SM due to the precipitation deficit. This type of land-atmosphere coupling was especially prominent in the GP. In the NE region, the heatwave governed ET through the increase of potential ET (PET) based on energy-limited coupling, which played a crucial role in the development of drought.

The impacts of the different land-atmosphere coupling behaviors on the predictability of the 13-km Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory (GFDL) System for High-resolution prediction on Earth-to-Local Domains (SHiELD) were also investigated by checking its 10-day forecasts during the same period. The analysis was particularly focused on the GP and NE regions, where different land-atmosphere coupling behaviors were observed. The model's warm bias in the GP region was associated with the overestimated net radiation, and the bias was further amplified through the water-limited coupling. In the NE region, the PET-related variables, including surface air temperature, influenced the predictability of drought onset by limiting ET through the energy-limited coupling. Based on our findings, this study highlights the crucial role of land-atmosphere coupling behaviors and provides a scientific strategy for enhancing the model predictability of compound drought-heatwaves.