Toward a Coupled Land-Lake Model Framework

Abstract:

The water cycle is poorly represented by modelling lakes and the land surface in separate models. Moreover, the interface between lake and land (i.e. coastal waters and shorelines) is rich both in economic assets and ecological diversity, making it a critical area for model accuracy. Model coupling can remediate the imaginary boundary that exists between hydrodynamic (e.g. Finite Volume Community Ocean Model) and hydrologic (e.g. WRF-Hydro) models through exchange of state variables such as temperature, runoff, water levels. However, this problem is complex since the location of the interface itself is dynamic: shorelines are impacted by water levels and rivers appear or disappear during various seasons or events. Water volume plays a key role in many societal impacts on the coasts (e.g. drought and coastal flooding) so handling the exchange of water mass/volume between land and lake is a logical first step toward model coupling. This work aims to develop a framework for handling this exchange of water between land and lake.