A Groundwater and Runoff Formulation for Weather and Climate Models

Soil moisture modifies the state of the atmosphere and thus plays a major role in the climate system. Its spatial distribution is strongly modulated by the underlying orography. Yet the vertical transport of soil water and especially the generation of groundwater runoff at the bottom of the soil column are currently treated in a crude way in most atmospheric and climate models. This potentially leads to large biases in near‐surface temperatures during midlatitude summertime conditions, when the soils may dry out. Here we present a new formulation for groundwater and runoff formation. It is based on Richards equation, allows for saturated aquifers, includes a slope‐dependent groundwater discharge, and enables a subgrid‐scale treatment of the underlying orography. The proposed numerical implementation ensures a physically consistent treatment of the water fluxes in the soil column, using ideas from flux‐corrected transport methodologies. An implementation of this formulation into TERRA_ML, the land surface model of the regional climate model of the COnsortium for Small‐scale MOdeling (COSMO) in CLimate Mode (CCLM), is validated both in idealized and real‐case simulations. Idealized simulations demonstrate the important role of the lower boundary condition at the bottom of the soil column and display a physically meaningful recharge and discharge of the saturated zone. Validation against measurements at selected stations shows an improved seasonal evolution of soil water content. Finally, decade‐long climate simulations over Europe exhibit a realistic representation of the groundwater distribution across continental scales and mountainous areas, an improved annual cycle of surface latent heat fluxes, and as a consequence reductions of long‐standing biases in near‐surface temperatures in semiarid regions.ISSN:1942-246