Relationship between ST######, ST, and TSLB

[chunchih]

Hi,

Another WRF user (xgfan_wrf) asked a similar question some time ago. However, after reading through the thread, the relationship between the soil temperature fields in met_em and wrfinput still isn't very clear to me.

I have a couple of questions about the layered soil fields in general:
1) in wrfinput, what is the order (with increasing index) of TSLB and SMOIS? For now, I think it is from shallow to deep. In my case, since I employed the Noah LSM and used GFS input, I think the first layer corresponds to the 0-10 cm underground layer, the second layer corresponds to 10-40 cm, the third layer corresponds to 40-100 cm, and finally the fourth layer corresponds to 100-200 cm. Is this correct?
2) When real.exe is run, which set of soil fields is processed? I saw I have two sets in met_em. One set (2D) is named ST###### or SM######, where ###### indicates the depth information, and the other set (3D) is named ST or SM. As mentioned in xgfan_wrf's post, ST and SM have their layers reversed compared to their corresponding fields in wrfinput (TSLB and SMOIS). If ST and SM are used during real.exe, could you please point me to where in the real.exe codes this re-ordering occurs?

Thank you

 

[Ming Chen]

Please see my answers below:
(1) in wrfinput, what is the order (with increasing index) of TSLB and SMOIS? For now, I think it is from shallow to deep. In my case, since I employed the Noah LSM and used GFS input, I think the first layer corresponds to the 0-10 cm underground layer, the second layer corresponds to 10-40 cm, the third layer corresponds to 40-100 cm, and finally the fourth layer corresponds to 100-200 cm. Is this correct?

You are right that the soil layers in wrfinput (and also wrfout) are from surface to bottom of soil. Depending on the specific scheme you use, the soil depth of each layer can be different. You can find details in share/module_soil_pre.F

(2) When real.exe is run, which set of soil fields is processed?
I believe it is the 3D soil moisture and soil temperature from met_em files are interpolated to soil levels used by a specific land model. You can find details in "SUBROUTINE process_soil_real" (inside the code share/module_soil_pre.F). Note that this subroutine is called by
dyn_em/module_initialize_real.F.