LSM changes (more) relevant to warm season

• Use high-resolution (1-km vs 1 deg) vegetation and soils data bases with more classes - Unifies with WRF-Noah LSM and responds to EPA / CMAQ request

• Retuned canopy conductance and other vegetation parameters - ops had been tuned to higher values to maintain reasonable evaporation rates given low soil moisture bias which is removed by Ying Lin’s new precipitation assimilation procedures

• Lowered roughness length for heat to reduce skin temperature, and hence lower diagnosed 2-m air temp

  • But no significant change to sensible heat flux due to compensating effects on exchange coefficient and near-surface temperature gradient
  • No significant change to latent heat flux primarily because LE largely affected by canopy conductance, which is much larger than aerodynamic conductance (especially in regions with large greenness fraction)