Geosci. Model Dev., 8, 151–170, 2015 www.geosci-model-dev.net/8/151/2015/ doi:10.5194/gmd-8-151-2015 © Author(s) 2015. CC Attribution 3.0 License. Implementation and comparison of a suite of heat stress metrics within the Community Land Model version 4.5 J. R. Buzan1,2, K. Oleson3, and M. Huber1,2 1Department of Earth Sciences, University of New Hampshire, Durham, New Hampshire, USA 2Earth Systems Research Center, Institute for the Study of Earth, Ocean, and Space, University of New Hampshire, Durham, New Hampshire, USA 3National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, Colorado, USA Correspondence to: J. R. Buzan (
[email protected]) Received: 21 June 2014 – Published in Geosci. Model Dev. Discuss.: 8 August 2014 Revised: 2 December 2014 – Accepted: 23 December 2014 – Published: 5 February 2015 Abstract. We implement and analyze 13 different metrics culation and the improved wet bulb calculation are ±1.5 ◦C. (4 moist thermodynamic quantities and 9 heat stress metrics) These differences are important due to human responses in the Community Land Model (CLM4.5), the land surface to heat stress being nonlinear. Furthermore, we show heat component of the Community Earth System Model (CESM). stress has unique regional characteristics. Some metrics have We call these routines the HumanIndexMod. We limit the al- a strong dependency on regionally extreme moisture, while gorithms of the HumanIndexMod to meteorological inputs of others have a strong dependency on regionally extreme tem- temperature, moisture, and pressure for their calculation. All perature. metrics assume no direct sunlight exposure. The goal of this project is to implement a common framework for calculating operationally used heat stress metrics, in climate models, of- fline output, and locally sourced weather data sets, with the 1 Introduction intent that the HumanIndexMod may be used with the broad- est of applications.