Soil-atmosphere relationships: The Hungarian perspective

This study discusses scientific contributions analyzing soil-atmosphere relationships. These studies deal with both the biogeophysical and biogeochemical aspects of this relationship, with biogeophysical aspects being in the majority. All of the studies refer either directly or indirectly to the fundamental importance of soil moisture content. Moisture has a basic influence on the spatiotemporal pattern of evapotranspiration, and so 1) on cloud formation and precipitation events by regulating the intensity of convection, and 2) on the trace-gas exchanges in the near-surface atmosphere. Hungarian modeling efforts have highlighted that soils in the Pannonian Basin have region-specific features. Consequently, shallow and deep convection processes are also, to some extent, region-specific, at least in terms of the diurnal change of the planetary boundary layer height and the spatial distribution of convective precipitation. The soil-dependent region-distinctiveness of these two phenomena has been recognized; at the same time the strength of the relationships has not yet been quantified.