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A Sensitivity Analysis of the NOAH Land Surface Model.   S.S. Silva1, and M. Gimond2. 1Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA, and 2Dynamac Corporation, Kennedy Space Center, FL.

   The NOAH land surface model simulates the energetic and hydrologic fluxes across the air/soil interface. It is a flexible model that can be tailored to predict land surface conditions on Mars. Inputs to the model are wind speed, air temperature, pressure, precipitation, shortwave and longwave radiation. Model outputs are soil temperature, soil moisture, vegetation surface moisture, evapo-transpiration, sensible heat flux, and latent heat flux. As a working model, the objective of this experiment was to quantify and assess the sensitivity of the model to variations in rainfall using the 11 different vegetation types and 9 different soil types.

   The project consisted of three steps. First, the 2003 meteorological input data were consolidated into a specific format. The next step entailed running the model 297 times for all vegetation types, soil types, and rainfall data from three separate locations. The final step consisted of analyzing the output using various statistical tools.

  Results showed that variation in rainfall amount had an obvious effect on soil moisture and latent heat flux. Canopy moisture and skin temperature appeared to be resilient to changes in rainfall after a 24 hour period following the rainfall event. There was no observable effect of variation of rainfall on sensible heat flux.

  The NOAH land surface model could be adapted to the simulation of weather patterns on Mars if coupled with an appropriate weather model and  tailored to Mars soil conditions thus predicting the conditions under which long term habitation would occur on the Red Planet.

(Supported by NASA)