Ecohydrological Controls on Moist Convection and Long-Term Rainfall Feedback

TL;DR

This study develops a stochastic model linking land surface, soil moisture, vegetation, and atmospheric dynamics to understand how they influence moist convection and rainfall feedbacks.

Contribution

It introduces a coupled dynamical model that reveals how soil and plant properties modulate convective potential and rainfall feedbacks over time.

Findings

Loamy sand maintains high CAPE at high soil moisture.

Finer textures suppress convection as soils dry.

Plant strategies influence dry-down duration and convection persistence.

Abstract

To elucidate how land surface state and soil moisture dynamics regulate moist convection, and how convective rainfall subsequently reshapes surface and root-zone hydrology, we develop a stochastic dynamical model that couples soil moisture, vegetation hydraulics, atmospheric boundary layer evolution, and convective available potential energy (CAPE). We show that CAPE depends not only on the free-tropospheric environment but also on soil moisture, through its control of surface fluxes, boundary-layer growth, and the timing of the intersection between the atmospheric boundary layer and the lifting condensation level (LCL). Soil texture and plant properties strongly modulate convective potential during dry-down. Loamy sand favors convection at relatively high soil moisture and maintains the largest CAPE at the time of LCL-ABL crossing across drying conditions. In contrast, sandy soils exhibit high CAPE when wet but lose convective potential rapidly as they dry. As matric potential becomes more negative, convection is increasingly suppressed in finer, loamy clay textures. Plant functional type further shapes dry-down dynamics: water-use-maximizing strategies can enhance dry persistence via stomatal closure during drying, whereas more conservative strategies can sustain convection for longer periods. On longer timescales, stochastic rainfall forcing with CAPE-dependent precipitation intensity produces persistent wet and dry soil moisture regimes, with switching times that depend on soil hydraulic properties, plant physiological traits, and atmospheric conditions.