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Fig. 10 Zonal means of land surface wetland fraction. The grey area indicates the range of the observation
data sets, the green curve shows their mean extent (cf. Fig. 9 ), and the blue curve shows wetland fractions as
simulated by the MPI-HM
4 Concluding Remark
In the present review, we have highlighted some noticeable deficiencies in climate mod-
elling with respect to the hydrological cycle, which provide perspectives for the modelling
of relevant interactions between climate and terrestrial hydrology. These interactions are
often imposed by different land-atmosphere coupling mechanisms. Over many regions, the
wet state of the soil (soil moisture, wetlands, irrigation) determines feedback character-
istics. These feedbacks not only impact the local scale but also often act on the large scale.
In this respect, human land use may affect remote regions as has been shown for irrigation
over the South Asian monsoon region. As the characteristic of associated feedbacks varies
for different regions and may change under future climate conditions, they have to be
regarded in respective modelling studies. The coupling to biogeochemistry, i.e. carbon
cycle and vegetation, is important to quantify feedbacks related to wetlands and perma-
frost. The representation of their complex dynamics within ESMs is a challenging task, but
it is nevertheless necessary to investigate ongoing and future climate changes over the
high-latitude regions.
Acknowledgments The authors acknowledge the financial support of T. Blome by the European Union
FP7-ENV project PAGE21 under contract number GA282700. S. Hagemann was supported by funding from
the European Union within the EMBRACE project (grant no. 282672). We also acknowledge previous work
that was supported by funding from the European Union within the WATCH project (contract No. 036946).
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