CONICET | Buscador de Institutos y Recursos Humanos

The initialization method of employing initial soil moisture interpolated from global reanalysis data or GCMs simulations is still a common practice in regional climate simulations. This inevitably generates initial errors since soil moisture from two different models are not exchangeable. The la Plata Basin in subtropical South America has been identified as a region where the correct representation of interaction between soil moisture and near surface variables as well as precipitation could be important for seasonal prediction skill (e.g. Collini et al. 2008; Barreiro and Díaz 2011; Sörensson et al. 2011; Ruscica et al. 2013). In this study we examine the hypothesis that, to understand the possible contributions of the soil to the seasonal predictive skill of a model, it is necessary to understand the processes that define the soil moisture memory and the associated uncertainties for different vegetation covers. The specific questions we seek to address are: How does the initialization method affect predictions of surface climate over the basin? Does interaction with the atmosphere depend on the type of land cover? How important is the choice of month of initialization for monthly-to-seasonal climate predictions?