On the diurnal cycle of surface energy fluxes in the North American monsoon region using the WRF-Hydro modeling system

Characterization of diurnal surface fluxes and their controls has not been well constrained due to the paucity of observations in the NAM region. In this study, we evaluate the performance of the uncoupled WRF-Hydro modeling system in its ability to represent soil moisture, turbulent heat fluxes, and surface temperature observations and compare these to operational analyses from other commonly used land surface models (LSMs).

After a rigorous model evaluation, we quantify how the diurnal cycles of surface energy fluxes vary during the warm season for the major ecosystems in a regional basin. We find that the diurnal cycle of latent heat flux is more sensitive to ecosystem type than sensible heat flux due to the response of plant transpiration to variations in soil water content. Furthermore, the peak timing of precipitation affects the shape and magnitude of the diurnal cycle of plant transpiration in water-stressed ecosystems, inducing mesoscale heterogeneity in land surface conditions between the major ecosystems within the basin.