[NARCCAP-discuss] mrso

Seth McGinnis mcginnis at ucar.edu
Thu Nov 21 16:39:38 MST 2013


Hi Tegenu,

It's for the whole soil profile.

In general, answers to questions like this can often be found by looking
on the Data Tables page on the NARCCAP website and clicking on the
variable name, which links to the corresponding CF standard name and
description.

Do you need the depth of the soil profile, or the moisture capacity?  If
the latter, it's variable mrsofc in Table 4, which you can find here:
http://www.narccap.ucar.edu/data/table4/

For information about the profile depth, you will need to consult the
documentation for the various land surface models.  (CLASS for CRCM;
MOSES for HRM3; BATS for RCM3; and NOAH for ECP2, MM5I, and WRFG.)

I answered a similar question recently, and my very quick skim through
the documentation produced the following numbers, but you should use
them with caution, and if they don't make sense, you'll need to dig a
little deeper:

BATS: surface soil layer 10 cm, root zone 1-2 m, deep soil 3 m .

CLASS: 3 layers of thickness 0.1, 0.25, and 3.75 m.

MOSES: 4 layers, 0.1, 0.25, 0.65, and either 1 or 2 meters thick (values
given are inconsistent).

NOAH: 4 layers, 0.1, 0.3, 0.6, and 1 m thick

Cheers,

--Seth


On 11/20/13 3:45 PM, Tegenu Engda wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> 
> Is the NARCCAP total soil moisture content (mrso) data for the whole
> soil profile (if so what is the depth of the profile) or just for
> some specific depth. I couldn't find detail descriptions about it
> 
> 
> Thank you
> 
> 
> Tegenu
> 
> _______________________________________________ narccap-discuss
> mailing list narccap-discuss at mailman.ucar.edu 
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