The role of soil ice in land‐atmosphere coupling over the United States: A soil moisture–precipitation winter feedback mechanism

[1] We perform two 23 year simulations using a regional climate model coupled with the National Center for Atmospheric Research Community Land Model version 3.5 (RegCM‐CLM) to investigate land‐atmosphere coupling in the continental United States during the cold season (October–April) and the role of soil water phase. One simulation allows the land surface to interact freely (RunI) while the other simulation uses monthly climatological soil moisture (soil liquid plus soil ice) to represent an uncoupled land surface (RunC). A winter land‐atmosphere coupling signal occurs slightly south of the freezing line, indicating that the freezing line could be regarded as a temporally varying transition zone similar to the dry‐to‐wet transition zone identified in prior studies during boreal summer. Warmer soil temperatures in RunI translate into additional available surface energy (sum of latent and sensible heat) producing locally elevated moist static energy in the atmosphere. Additionally, warmer temperatures and greater moist static energy increase both large‐scale (6–30% increase, March) and convective precipitation (>100% increase, April). As a result of the increased liquid precipitation during transition months, soil liquid water increases thereby warming winter ground and air temperatures in the interactive run and enhancing the potential for subsequent liquid precipitation. While RunC includesmore persistent soil ice than is likely present in the real land‐atmosphere system, this precipitation‐soil moisture feedback underscores the role of soil moisture phase and variability as an important surface parameter in the winter months.