The Location of Large-Scale Soil Moisture Anomalies Affects Moisture Transport and Precipitation Over Southeastern South America

Southeastern South America (SESA) is a highly productive agricultural region and a hot spot for land-atmosphere interactions. To evaluate the impact of dry soil moisture anomalies (SMAs) on SESA climate and the sensitivity of the regional climate response to the location of SMAs, we perform three experimental simulations using the Community Earth System Model (CESM) with prescribed dry SMAs over (a) SESA, (b) western SESA, and (c) eastern SESA. The dry SESA and eastern SESA simulations show widespread negative precipitation anomalies. In contrast, the dry western SESA simulation shows positive precipitation anomalies over northeastern Argentina, which are associated with the enhanced southward moisture flux co-located with the South American low-level jet exit region. A composite analysis of extremely dry cases over western SESA using reanalysis data agrees with the findings from our CESM experiment. These findings have potential implications for subseasonal forecasting in this region. Large-scale soil moisture anomalies evolve slowly and can provide an opportunity for better weather forecasting at timescales longer than 2 weeks. Therefore, it is critical to understand the causal physical mechanism and evaluate whether the regional climate response is sensitive to the location of soil moisture anomalies, especially in a productive agricultural region like southeastern South America (SESA). Using a numerical climate model, we simulate the impacts of dry soil over (a) SESA, (b) western SESA, and (c) eastern SESA. The simulations show that dry soil over western SESA can alter regional atmospheric circulation in the proximity of the existing corridor of poleward moisture transport, hence enhancing rainfall over northeastern Argentina. Conversely, dry soil over eastern SESA or the entire SESA region results in less precipitation because enhanced northerly transport is not co-located with the low-level wind corridor. Analysis of a dataset that incorporates observations supports our findings from numerical simulations. The impact of dry soil moisture anomalies (SMAs) on southeastern South America (SESA) regional climate is sensitive to the location of SMAs This study provides a causal mechanism linking soil moisture to precipitation via atmospheric circulation When western SESA has dry soil, it generates anomalous geostrophic wind, which is co-located with the low-level jet exit region