Abstract. The potential of the implementation of the land surface model SURFEX in the atmospheric ALARO-0 model configuration of the ALADIN system is tested in a continuous regional climate simulation. This contribution is evaluated with respect to the regional climate simulated by the original setup of ALARO-0 with ISBA. Next, an assessment has been performed to evaluate the continuous setup with an upper air daily reinitialised setup, where the surface is kept in a freely continuous mode. The results show that the introduction of SURFEX improves or has a neutral impact on the 2 m temperature and the daily total precipitation. More importantly, the use of an upper air daily reinitialised atmosphere outperforms the setup with a continuous atmosphere, for the 2 m temperature in winter and summer, and for the summer daily total precipitation. The differences between the two downscaling setups in the 2 m temperature and precipitation interact with the soil moisture. This coupling is strong for the continental areas, which motivates the use of a coupled land-atmosphere model to optimise the representation of the climate.