Scaling Land‐Atmosphere Interactions: Special or Fundamental?

The highly interactive and variable nature of scales of space and time featured in components of the Earth system imparts enormous complexity to land‐atmosphere interactions. Here, we introduce an open special collection on Advances in Scaling and Modeling of Land‐Atmosphere Interactions that features articles in JGR: Biogeosciences, JGR: Atmospheres, Journal of Advances in the Modeling of Earth Systems, and Earth & Space Science. Collectively, these articles identify interactions across multiple processes, in field experiments, long‐term observations, and numerical simulations, which are then used to advance theories of scale interaction to improve predictive models. Plain Language Summary: Scale refers to the patterns in space and oscillations in time of features in our universe. The Earth system features a wide range of scales. Understanding the processes that explain the size, shape, regularity, and changes in those scales looms large in our science. Land‐atmosphere interaction refers to the ways that organisms and elements of the land surface influence the structure and evolution of the atmosphere and in turn, how weather and climate processes influence the ground. Numerous studies through coordinated field experiments and computer simulations have helped us advance understanding of how scale influences land‐atmosphere interaction. We introduce a special collection that documents many of those. Key Points: Scaling in space and time is an essential foundation for understanding land‐atmosphere interactionsA series of papers in this collection demonstrate scale‐related advances in a number of areasCoordination of research across disciplines is needed [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]