GEOtop 2.0: simulating the combined energy and water balance at and below the land surface accounting for soil freezing, snow cover and terrain effects

GEOtop is a fine-scale grid-based simulator that represents the heat and water budgets at and below the soil surface. It describes the three-dimensional water flow in the soil and the energy exchange with the atmosphere, considering the radiative and turbulent fluxes. Furthermore, it reproduces the...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Geoscientific Model Development
Main Authors: S. Endrizzi, S. Gruber, M. Dall'Amico, R. Rigon
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:English
Published: Copernicus Publications 2014
Subjects:
Online Access:https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-7-2831-2014
https://doaj.org/article/b5b1106499504b00ab88c02e48296e0b
Description
Summary:GEOtop is a fine-scale grid-based simulator that represents the heat and water budgets at and below the soil surface. It describes the three-dimensional water flow in the soil and the energy exchange with the atmosphere, considering the radiative and turbulent fluxes. Furthermore, it reproduces the highly non-linear interactions between the water and energy balance during soil freezing and thawing, and simulates the temporal evolution of the water and energy budgets in the snow cover and their effect on soil temperature. Here, we present the core components of GEOtop 2.0 and demonstrate its functioning. Based on a synthetic simulation, we show that the interaction of processes represented in GEOtop 2.0 can result in phenomena that are significant and relevant for applications involving permafrost and seasonally frozen soils, both in high altitude and latitude regions.