Modeling South Asian climate in relation to irrigation and land use changes using a modified scheme for soil hydrology and an interactive vegetation scheme in a regional climate model (MOSAIC)

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Heiko Paeth
• Subject Area: Atmospheric Science
• Term: since 2024
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 536678292

In the planned project MOSAIC (Modeling South Asian climate in relation to irrigation and land use changes using a modified scheme for soil hydrology and an interactive vegetation scheme in a regional climate model), the development of a sophisticated and novel irrigation parametrization scheme that assesses the impact of expanding irrigated land on climate, water, and energy budget of South Asia is planned, using a high-resolution regional climate model. The novelty of the proposed method lies in developing an irrigation module in combination with a modified soil hydrology and a dynamic vegetation scheme. Case studies related to extreme events and South Asian Monsoon features (intra-seasonal variability including active and break episodes along with onset and withdrawal) using the REMO non-hydrostatic version at the convection permitting scale of 3kms will be also performed with the best model setup. Inclusion of better and improved land surface processes and a complex irrigation scheme at high-resolution is expected to reduce biases in climate variables and also helps in better understanding of processes related to the South Asian Monsoon variability.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants