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Science 20 August 2004:
Vol. 305. no. 5687, pp. 1138 - 1140
DOI: 10.1126/science.1100217
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Reports

Regions of Strong Coupling Between Soil Moisture and Precipitation

The GLACE Team: Randal D. Koster1* Paul A. Dirmeyer,2 Zhichang Guo,2 Gordon Bonan,3 Edmond Chan,4 Peter Cox,5 C. T. Gordon,6 Shinjiro Kanae,7 Eva Kowalczyk,8 David Lawrence,9 Ping Liu,10 Cheng-Hsuan Lu,11 Sergey Malyshev,12 Bryant McAvaney,13 Ken Mitchell,11 David Mocko,10 Taikan Oki,14 Keith Oleson,3 Andrew Pitman,15 Y. C. Sud,1 Christopher M. Taylor,16 Diana Verseghy,4 Ratko Vasic,17 Yongkang Xue,17 Tomohito Yamada14

Previous estimates of land-atmosphere interaction (the impact of soil moisture on precipitation) have been limited by a lack of observational data and by the model dependence of computational estimates. To counter the second limitation, a dozen climate-modeling groups have recently performed the same highly controlled numerical experiment as part of a coordinated comparison project. This allows a multimodel estimation of the regions on Earth where precipitation is affected by soil moisture anomalies during Northern Hemisphere summer. Potential benefits of this estimation may include improved seasonal rainfall forecasts.

1 NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD 20771, USA.
2 Center for Ocean-Land-Atmosphere Studies, Calverton, MD 20705, USA.
3 National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, CO 80307, USA.
4 Meteorological Service of Canada, Toronto, Ontario M34 5T4, Canada.
5 Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research, Exeter EX1 3PB, UK.
6 Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory, Princeton, NJ 08542, USA.
7 Research Institute for Humanity and Nature, Kyoto 602-0878, Japan.
8 CSIRO Atmospheric Research, Aspendale, Victoria 3195, Australia.
9 University of Reading, Reading, Berkshire RG6 6BB, UK.
10 Science Applications International Corporation, Beltsville, MD 20705, USA.
11 National Center for Environmental Prediction, Camps Springs, MD 20746, USA.
12 Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544, USA.
13 Bureau of Meteorology Research Centre, Melbourne, Victoria 3001, Australia.
14 University of Tokyo, Tokyo 153-8505, Japan.
15 Macquarie University, North Ryde, New South Wales 2109, Australia.
16 Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, Wallingford, Oxfordshire OX10 8BB, UK.
17 University of California, Los Angeles, CA 90095, USA.

* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: randal.d.koster{at}nasa.gov

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