ISPRS Archives XXXVIII-8/W3 Workshop Proceedings: Impact of Climate Change on Agriculture 217 CLIMATE CHANGE STUDIES USING COUPLED MODEL—LAND SURFACE PERSPECTIVE

Climate involves a complex interplay of physical, chemical and biological processes of the atmosphere, ocean, sea-ice and land surface. It is now well understood that although detailed weather fluctuations can not be predicted beyond a certain time period, it is possible to predict several space-time averaged processes of atmosphere, land, ocean and sea-ice over a certain regions for a longer period of time i.e. climate change. This has been made possible because of better understanding of the dynamics of the coupled tropical ocean-atmosphere system and also significant improvements have been made in the models of atmosphere and oceans. A major component of any climate model is the representation of Land Surface Processes. The land surface exchanges moisture, momentum and heat with atmosphere. More realistic treatment of land parameters like soil wetness, land use and land cover changes including urbanization, Leaf Area Index (LAI) etc. are required to be done adequately. The land surface processes (LSP) are significant because of their heterogeneous nature spatially and temporally. A successful inclusion of LSP in climate model must address the issues related to the regional scale variation of the properties of LSP. This is why a proper understanding of land surface processes is very crucial for climate simulation using numerical models. Community Climate System Model (CCSM3), a coupled model developed at National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) containing atmosphere, ocean, sea-ice and land processes, simulation have been analysed for suitability in the Indian Monsoon region. The offline Community Land Model (CLM), taken from CCSM3, simulation forced with a given atmospheric conditions have also been analysed for the Indian Monsoon region. Both the simulation results are compared with observed climatological features and assessment to improve CCSM3 for regional climate change studies is made.