Interactive lakes in the Canadian Regional Climate Model, version 5: the role of lakes in the regional climate of North America

Abstract

Two one-dimensional (1-D) column lake models have been coupled interactively with a developmental version of the Canadian Regional Climate Model. Multidecadal reanalyses-driven simulations with and without lakes revealed the systematic biases of the model and the impact of lakes on the simulated North American climate.The presence of lakes strongly influences the climate of the lake-rich region of the Canadian Shield. Due to their large thermal inertia, lakes act to dampen the diurnal and seasonal cycle of low-level air temperature. In late autumn and winter, ice-free lakes induce large sensible and latent heat fluxes, resulting in a strong enhancement of precipitation downstream of the Laurentian Great Lakes, which is referred to as the snow belt.The FLake (FL) and Hostetler (HL) lake models perform adequately for small subgrid-scale lakes and for large resolved lakes with shallow depth, located in temperate or warm climatic regions. Both lake models exhibit specific strengths and weaknesses. For example, HL simulates too rapid spring warming and too warm surface temperature, especially in large and deep lakes; FL tends to damp the diurnal cycle of surface temperature. An adaptation of 1-D lake models might be required for an adequate simulation of large and deep lakes

Reanalysis-driven climate simulation over CORDEX North America domain using the Canadian Regional Climate Model, version 5: model performance evaluation

“…In its fully elastic non-hydrostatic formulation (Yeh et al 2002), GEM uses a vertical coordinate based on hydrostatic pressure (Laprise 1992). The detailed description of the CRCM5 model can be found in Zadra et al (2008), Martynov et al (2012), Hernández-Díaz et al (2012). The following physical parameterizations, inherited from GEM, are used in CRCM5: deep convection following Kain and Fritsch (1990), shallow convection based on a transient version of Kuo (1965) scheme (Bélair et al 2005), large-scale condensation (Sundqvist et al 1989), correlated-K solar and terrestrial radiations (Li and Barker 2005), and subgridscale orographic gravity-wave drag (McFarlane 1987).…”

“…This includes a change to the planetary boundary layer parameterization consisting of reducing turbulent vertical fluxes under very stable conditions: vertical mixing is suppressed at Richardson number values R i [ 7/60 & 0.12. The interactively coupled one-dimensional lake model FLake (Mironov et al 2010) has been introduced into the CRCM5 and the performance of the lake-coupled model has been evaluated by Martynov et al (2012). Interactively coupled FLake model is applied both to resolved and subgrid lakes, following the mosaic approach.…”

Rain-on-snow events over North America based on two Canadian regional climate models

“…The resolvable large-scale precipitation is modeled by following Sundqvist et al (1989), while radiation is parameterized by Correlated K solar and terrestrial radiation of Li and Barker (2005). This model uses the interactive Flake lake model (Martynov et al 2012) and Canadian Land Surface Scheme (CLASS) 3.5 (Verseghy 2009(Verseghy , 2012 for the land part. CLASS 3.5 allows flexible soil layer configuration and employs prognostic equations for energy and water conservation for the soil layers and a thermally and hydrologically distinct snow pack (Diro et al 2014).…”

3-Step dynamical downscaling with empirical correction of sea-surface conditions: application to a CORDEX Africa simulation

“…Otherwise, as in HD13 and Laprise et al (2013), the standard CLASS distributions of sand and clay fields as well as the bare soil albedo values were replaced by data from the ECOCLIMAP database (Masson et al 2003). Finally, the interactive thermo-dynamical 1-D lake module (FLake model) was also used (see Martynov et al 2010Martynov et al , 2012. The CRCM5 was integrated over the CORDEX Africa domain (Fig.…”