Jongen, HJ;
Lipson, M;
Teuling, AJ;
Grimmond, S;
Baik, J‐J;
Best, M;
Demuzere, M;
... Steeneveld, GJ; + view all
(2024)
The Water Balance Representation in Urban‐PLUMBER Land Surface Models.
Journal of Advances in Modeling Earth Systems
, 16
(10)
, Article e2024MS004231. 10.1029/2024ms004231.
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Abstract
Urban Land Surface Models (ULSMs) simulate energy and water exchanges between the urban surface and atmosphere. However, earlier systematic ULSM comparison projects assessed the energy balance but ignored the water balance, which is coupled to the energy balance. Here, we analyze the water balance representation in 19 ULSMs participating in the Urban-PLUMBER project using results for 20 sites spread across a range of climates and urban form characteristics. As observations for most water fluxes are unavailable, we examine the water balance closure, flux timing, and magnitude with a score derived from seven indicators expecting better scoring models to capture the latent heat flux more accurately. We find that the water budget is only closed in 57% of the model-site combinations assuming closure when annual total incoming fluxes (precipitation and irrigation) fluxes are within 3% of the outgoing (all other) fluxes. Results show the timing is better captured than magnitude. No ULSM has passed all water balance indicators for any site. Models passing more indicators do not capture the latent heat flux more accurately refuting our hypothesis. While output reporting inconsistencies may have negatively affected model performance, our results indicate models could be improved by explicitly verifying water balance closure and revising runoff parameterizations. By expanding ULSM evaluation to the water balance and related to latent heat flux performance, we demonstrate the benefits of evaluating processes with direct feedback mechanisms to the processes of interest.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | The Water Balance Representation in Urban‐PLUMBER Land Surface Models |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1029/2024ms004231 |
| Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.1029/2024MS004231 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | © 2024 The Author(s). Journal of Advances in Modeling Earth Systems published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of American Geophysical Union. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Maths and Physical Sciences |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10197826 |
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