Development of Land-River Two-Way Coupling in the Energy Exascale Earth
System Model
Abstract
Floodplain inundation links river and land systems through significant
water, sediment, and nutrient exchanges. However, these two-way
interactions between land and river are currently missing in most Earth
System Models. In this study, we introduced the two-way hydrological
coupling between the land component, ELM, and the river component,
MOSART, in Energy Exascale Earth System Model (E3SM) to study the
impacts of floodplain inundation on land and river processes. We
calibrated the river channel geometry and developed a new data-driven
inundation scheme to improve the simulation of inundation dynamics in
E3SM. The new inundation scheme captures 96% of the spatial variation
of inundation area in a satellite inundation product at global scale, in
contrast with 7% when the default inundation scheme of E3SM was used.
Global simulations including the new inundation scheme performed at
resolution with and without two-way land-river coupling were used to
quantify the impact of coupling. Comparisons show that two-way coupling
modifies the water and energy cycle in 20% of the global land cells.
Specifically, riverine inundation is reduced by two-way coupling, but
inland inundation is intensified. Wetter periods are more impacted by
the two-way coupling at the global scale, while regions with different
climates exhibit different sensitivities. The two-way exchange of water
between the land and river components of E3SM provides the foundation
for enabling two-way coupling of land-river sediment and biogeochemical
fluxes. These capabilities will be used to improve understanding of the
interactions between water and biogeochemical cycles and their response
to human perturbations.