The role of land-atmosphere interactions for climate variability in Europe

We provide here a brief review on the role of land-atmosphere interactions for climate variability, with a special focus on the European continent. First, an overview of the land energy and water balances and of the underlying physical, biophysical, and biogeochemical soil-vegetation-atmosphere processes is presented. Further, we highlight how land-atmospbere feedbacks can impact seasonal to interannual climate variability in transitional climate zones and midlatitude regions along three main paths: Soil moisture-temperature interactions, soil moisture-precipitation interactions, and vegetation-climate interactions. In this context, we discuss recent results based on findings from terrestrial observational networks, satellite observations, and numerical climate models across a number of spatial and temporal scales. These results illustrate the extent to which land-surface processes, land-atmosphere interactions, and associated memory effects can modulate the dynamics of the climate system. Finally, the concluding section addresses current areas of uncertainty and open questions for research in this field.