Abstract
Abstract. This paper reports a comparison between large-scale simulations of three different land surface models (LSMs), ORCHIDEE, ISBA-A-gs and CTESSEL, forced with the same meteorological data, and compared with the carbon fluxes measured at 32 eddy covariance (EC) flux tower sites in Europe. The results show that the three simulations have the best performance for forest sites and the poorest performance for cropland and grassland sites. In addition, the three simulations have difficulties capturing the seasonality of Mediterranean and sub-tropical biomes, characterized by dry summers. This reduced simulation performance is also reflected in deficiencies in diagnosed light-use efficiency (LUE) and vapour pressure deficit (VPD) dependencies compared to observations. Shortcomings in the forcing data may also play a role. These results indicate that more research is needed on the LUE and VPD functions for Mediterranean and sub-tropical biomes. Finally, this study highlights the importance of correctly representing phenology (i.e. leaf area evolution) and management (i.e. rotation–irrigation for cropland, and grazing–harvesting for grassland) to simulate the carbon dynamics of European ecosystems and the importance of ecosystem-level observations in model development and validation.
Highlights
Terrestrial ecosystems currently mitigate climate warming by sequestering in plants and soils a significant portion of anthropogenic carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, which are considered to be primarily responsible for the increase in global surface air temperature since the mid-20th century (IPCC, 2007)
This paper reports a comparison between largescale simulations of three different land surface models (LSMs), ORCHIDEE, ISBA-A-gs and CTESSEL, forced with the same meteorological data, and compared with the carbon fluxes measured at 32 eddy covariance (EC) flux tower sites in Europe
The three simulations have difficulties capturing the seasonality of Mediterranean and sub-tropical biomes, characterized by dry summers. This reduced simulation performance is reflected in deficiencies in diagnosed light-use efficiency (LUE) and vapour pressure deficit (VPD) dependencies compared to observations
Summary
Terrestrial ecosystems currently mitigate climate warming by sequestering in plants and soils a significant portion of anthropogenic carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, which are considered to be primarily responsible for the increase in global surface air temperature since the mid-20th century (IPCC, 2007). The net carbon uptake is affected by re-growth of young forests (Bellassen et al, 2011), land management practices (Ciais et al, 2010; Kutsch et al, 2010), nitrogen deposition (Churkina et al, 2010), and response to extreme climate events (Ciais et al, 2005). Land surface models (LSMs) were developed in the last 20 years with the aim to improve the simulation of surface energy fluxes (e.g. latent heat, sensible heat, and net radiation) and biochemical fluxes (CO2) at a global scale.
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