Abstract
Abstract. As part of the terrestrial branch of the Japan-funded Arctic Climate Change Research Project (GRENE-TEA), which aims to clarify the role and function of the terrestrial Arctic in the climate system and assess the influence of its changes on a global scale, this model intercomparison project (GTMIP) is designed to (1) enhance communication and understanding between the modelling and field scientists and (2) assess the uncertainty and variations stemming from variability in model implementation/design and in model outputs using climatic and historical conditions in the Arctic terrestrial regions. This paper provides an overview of all GTMIP activity, and the experiment protocol of Stage 1, which is site simulations driven by statistically fitted data created using the GRENE-TEA site observations for the last 3 decades. The target metrics for the model evaluation cover key processes in both physics and biogeochemistry, including energy budgets, snow, permafrost, phenology, and carbon budgets. Exemplary results for distributions of four metrics (annual mean latent heat flux, annual maximum snow depth, gross primary production, and net ecosystem production) and for seasonal transitions are provided to give an outlook of the planned analysis that will delineate the inter-dependence among the key processes and provide clues for improving model performance.
Highlights
The pan-Arctic ecosystem is characterized by low mean temperatures, snow cover, and seasonal frozen ground or permafrost with a large carbon reservoir, covered by various biomes ranging from deciduous and evergreen forests to tundra
This paper presented an overview of the GTMIP activity and the experiment protocol for the Stage 1 intercomparison, with site simulations using the GRENE-TEA site observation data in the pan-Arctic region for the previous 3 decades
We described the framework of our project including targets, and provided data sets, conditions on model integration, lists of model output variables, and the habitat of currently participating models
Summary
The pan-Arctic ecosystem is characterized by low mean temperatures, snow cover, and seasonal frozen ground or permafrost with a large carbon reservoir, covered by various biomes (plant types) ranging from deciduous and evergreen forests to tundra. Various numerical modelling schemes have been developed to treat physical and biogeochemical processes on and below the land surface. Some of these processes are site-specific or process-oriented, while others are implemented as components of atmosphere–ocean coupled global climate models (AOGCMs), or Earth system models (ESMs) to interact with the overlying atmosphere. Among these processes, snowpack, ground freezing/thawing, and carbon exchange are the most relevant and important processes in terrestrial process models (TPMs) for investigating the climate and ecosystem of the pan-Arctic region
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