Soil moisture signature in global weather balloon soundings

The land surface influences the atmospheric boundary layer (ABL) through its impacts on the partitioning of available energy into evaporation and warming. Previous research on understanding this complex link focused mainly on site-scale flux observations, gridded satellite observations, climate modeling, and machine-learning experiments. Observational evidence of land surface conditions, among which soil moisture, impacting ABL properties at intermediate landscape scales is lacking. Here, we use a combination of global weather balloon soundings, satellite-observed soil moisture, and a coupled land-atmosphere model to infer the soil moisture impact on the ABL. The inferred relationship between soil moisture and surface flux partitioning reflects distinctive energy- and water-limited regimes, even at the landscape scale. We find significantly different behavior between those two regimes, associating dry conditions with on average warmer (approximate to 3 K), higher (approximate to 400 m) and drier (approximate to 1 kPa) afternoon ABLs than wet conditions. This evidence of land-atmosphere coupling from globally distributed atmospheric measurements highlights the need for an accurate representation of land-atmosphere coupling into climate models and their climate change projections.

Automated summary

This study investigates the impact of soil moisture on the atmospheric boundary layer using a combination of global weather balloon soundings, satellite-observed soil moisture, and a coupled land-atmosphere model. The results reveal distinctive energy- and water-limited regimes at the landscape scale, showing significant differences in behavior between dry and wet conditions. The evidence highlights the crucial role of land-atmosphere coupling in accurate climate modeling and projections of climate change.