The origin of soil moisture evaporation “regimes”

Abstract

Evaporation plays an extremely important role in determining summertime surface temperature variability over land. Observations show the relationship between evaporation and soil moisture generally conforms to the Budyko “two regime” framework; namely, that evaporation is limited by available soil moisture in dry climates and by radiation in wet climates. This framework has led climate models to different parameterizations of the relationship between evaporation and soil moisture in wet and dry regions. We have developed the Simple Land–Atmosphere Model (SLAM) as a tool for studying land–atmosphere interaction in general, and summertime temperature variability in particular. We use the SLAM to show that a negative feedback between evaporation and surface temperature gives rise to the two apparent evaporation “regimes” and provide analytic solutions for evaporative cooling anomalies that demonstrate the nonlinear impact of soil moisture perturbations. Stemming from the temperature dependence of vapor pressure deficit, the feedback we identify has important implications for how transitions between wet and dry land surfaces may impact temperature variability as the climate warms. We also elucidate the impacts of surface moisture and insolation perturbations on latent and sensible heat fluxes and on surface temperature variability.