English
 
Help Privacy Policy Disclaimer
  Advanced SearchBrowse

Item

ITEM ACTIONSEXPORT

Released

Journal Article

Shallow cumulus rooted in photosynthesis

MPS-Authors
/persons/resource/persons127607

Ouwersloot,  Huug G.
Atmospheric Chemistry, Max Planck Institute for Chemistry, Max Planck Society;

External Resource
No external resources are shared
Fulltext (restricted access)
There are currently no full texts shared for your IP range.
Fulltext (public)
There are no public fulltexts stored in PuRe
Supplementary Material (public)
There is no public supplementary material available
Citation

Vilà-Guerau de Arellano, J., Ouwersloot, H. G., Baldocchi, D., & Jacobs, C. M. J. (2014). Shallow cumulus rooted in photosynthesis. Geophysical Research Letters, 41(5), 1796-1802. doi:10.1002/2014GL059279.


Cite as: https://hdl.handle.net/11858/00-001M-0000-0024-A0AA-F
Abstract
We study the interactions between plant evapotranspiration, controlled by photosynthesis (C3 and C4 grasses), and moist thermals responsible for the formation of shallow cumulus clouds (SCu). Our findings are based on a series of systematic numerical experiments at fine spatial and temporal scales using large eddy simulations explicitly coupled to a plant-physiology model. The shading provided by SCu leads to strong spatial variability in photosynthesis and the surface energy balance. This in turn results in SCu characterized by less extreme and less skewed values of liquid water path. The larger water use efficiency of C4 grass leads to two opposite effects that influence boundary layer clouds: more vigorous and deeper thermals due to the larger buoyancy surface flux (positive effect) characterized by less moisture content (negative). We find that under these midlatitude and well-watered soil conditions, SCu are characterized by a larger cloud cover and liquid water path over C4 grass fields. Key Points <list list-type="bulleted"> <list-item id="grl51448-li-0001">Coupling clouds and vegetation leads to less extreme values cloud properties <list-item id="grl51448-li-0002">Time adjustment of the stoma leads to changes in the surface flux variability <list-item id="grl51448-li-0003">Systematic large eddy simulations coupled to photosynthesis and stoma aperture