Thermally Direct Mesoscale Circulations Caused by Land Surface Roughness Anomalies

Abstract

Deforestation, urbanization and construction of wind farms can change the land surface roughness, which can further influence surface heat fluxes and thus weather and climate. Land surface roughness anomalies can dynamically trigger convergence through changing mean wind speed. Here, we report a new mechanism, in which roughness anomalies cause thermally direct mesoscale circulations and anomalous precipitation. To study this mechanism, we conduct cloud-permitting simulations over an idealized land surface with prescribed surface roughness anomalies. Anomalously high roughness increases turbulent mixing near the surface, which decreases land surface temperature and outgoing longwave radiation. The additional surface net radiation partly goes into greater sensible heat flux, which triggers mesoscale circulations driven by differential heating. As a result, precipitation over the high-roughness anomaly is generally larger than that over the low-roughness background. This new mechanism, not present in climate models, may be relevant to storm formation over wind farms, cities and forests.