Impacts of vegetation and cold season processes on soil moisture and climate relationships over Eurasia

A number of modeling studies have addressed soil moisture persistence and its effects on the atmosphere. Such analyses are particularly valuable for seasonal to interannual prediction. In this study, we perform an observation-based study to further investigate the impacts of vegetation and cold season processes on soil moisture persistence and climate feedbacks. The joint analysis of independent meteorological, soil moisture and land cover measurements, without the use of a model, in the former Soviet Union provides a unique look at soil moisture-climate relationships at seasonal to interannual timescales. Averaged data over the growing season show a strong consistency between soil moisture and precipitation over grassland dominant regions, suggesting that precipitation anomalies are a dominant control of soil moisture at interannual timescales. Investigation of soil moisture persistence at the seasonal timescale shows a strong correlation between soil moisture in spring and the subsequent precipitation in summer over forest dominant regions and between cold season precipitation accumulation in winter and soil moisture in the following spring. Our findings can be explained by the theory proposed by Koster and Suarez (2001) and are consistent with the results from other modeling studies. Although it is hard to obtain the statistical meaningful conclusions because of the short data records, our results show the potential role of vegetation and cold season processes in land-atmosphere interactions. Further modeling studies and analyses using long in situ data records are necessary to fully verify our results.