Predicting terrestrial carbon, C, budgets and carbon‐climate feedbacks strongly relies on our ability to accurately model interactions between vegetation, C and water cycles, and the atmosphere. ...However, C fluxes simulated by global, process‐based terrestrial biosphere models (TBMs) remain subject to large uncertainties, partly due to unknown or poorly calibrated parameters. This is because TBMs have not routinely been confronted against C cycle related datasets within a statistical data assimilation (DA) system. In this review, we present 15 years' development of a C cycle DA system for optimizing C cycle parameters of the ORCHIDEE TBM. We analyze the impact of assimilating multiple different C cycle related datasets on regional to global‐scale gross and net CO2 fluxes. We find that assimilating atmospheric CO2 data is crucial for improving (increasing) ORCHIDEE predictions of the terrestrial land C sink. The improvement is predominantly due to the global‐scale constraint these data provide for optimizing initial soil C stocks, which are likely in error due to inaccurate assumptions about steady state spin‐up and incomplete knowledge of land use change histories. When comparing the data‐constrained ORCHIDEE land C sink estimates to the CAMS atmospheric inversion, we show that while the two approaches agree on the global C sink magnitude, they continue to differ in how the global C sink is partitioned between the northern hemisphere and tropics. We also discuss technical challenges faced in our C cycle DA studies, in particular the difficulty in characterizing the error covariance matrix due to unknown observation biases and/or model‐data inconsistencies. We offer our perspectives on how to tackle these challenges that we hope can serve as a roadmap for other TBM groups wishing to develop C cycle DA systems.
Key Points
Considerable progress has been made in constraining ORCHIDEE terrestrial biosphere model regional to global scale CO2 fluxes within a data assimilation system
Results highlight the importance of optimizing initial C stocks ‐ in addition to C cycle related parameters ‐ using global‐scale datasets
Challenges remain in utilizing the wide variety of available data, particularly when characterizing the observation error covariance matrix
Land water storage plays a fundamental role in the West African water cycle and has an important impact on climate and on the natural resources of this region. However, measurements of land water ...storage are scarce at regional and global scales and especially in poorly instrumented endorheic regions, such as most of the Sahel, where little useful information can be derived from river flow measurements and basin water budgets. The Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) satellite mission provides an accurate measurement of the terrestrial gravity field variations from which land water storage variations can be derived. However, their retrieval is not straightforward, and different methods are employed, which results in different water storage GRACE products. On the other hand, water storage can be estimated by land surface modeling forced with observed or satellite‐based boundary conditions, but such estimates can be highly model dependent. In this study, land water storage by six GRACE products and soil moisture estimations by nine land surface models (run within the framework of the African Monsoon Multidisciplinary Analysis Land Surface Intercomparison Project (ALMIP)) are evaluated over West Africa, with a particular focus on the Sahelian area. The water storage spatial distribution, including zonal transects, its seasonal cycle, and its and interannual variability, are analyzed for the years 2003–2007. Despite the nonnegligible differences among the various GRACE products and among the different models, a generally good agreement between satellite and model estimates is found over the West Africa study region. In particular, GRACE data are shown to reproduce well the water storage interannual variability over the Sahel for the 5 year study period. The comparison between satellite estimates and ALMIP results leads to the identification of processes needing improvement in the land surface models. In particular, our results point out the importance of correctly simulating slow water reservoirs as well as evapotranspiration during the dry season for accurate soil moisture modeling over West Africa.
Key Points
GRACE interannual variability of TWS over the Sahel
Importance of slow water reservoirs and dry season evapotraspiration in LSM
Zonal distribution: comparison between GRACE and ALMIP
Given the ever increasing spatial resolution of climate models and the significant role of lakes on the regional climate, it becomes important to represent water bodies in climate models. Such ...developments have started in the IPSL (Institut Pierre Simon Laplace) climate model and its land surface component, ORganizing Carbon and Hydrology In Dynamic Ecosystems (ORCHIDEE), with the Freshwater Lake model, FLake. To answer the questions raised by these new developments, such as the lake differentiation and related model parameters, we analyze spatial distributions of lake characteristics in the whole world to perform a global sensitivity analysis of the FLake parameters. As a result, three different climates and four lake depth configurations were selected as test cases. The Sobol method as sensitivity analysis based on variance decomposition was chosen to rank parameters impact on the model output, that is, lake surface water temperature, latent and sensible heat fluxes. We focus on the 11 parameters of the FLake model, which are the lake depth, the albedo and light extinction coefficient of water, snow, and ice respectively, the fetch, and the relaxation coefficient of the thermocline shape factor. The results show different sensitivity features according to the lake type and climate. The dominant role and time varying contribution of the lake depth, radiative parameters (albedo, light extinction coefficient) and thermocline relaxation coefficient linked to the atmospheric conditions, were clearly highlighted. These findings will lead us to distinguish between different lake categories in each grid cell of ORCHIDEE in the future implementation.
Plain Language Summary
Lakes are often neglected in climate modeling because their spatial extent does not exceed 4% of the Earth land area. But given the ever increasing spatial resolution of climate models and the significant role of lakes on the regional climate, it becomes important to represent water bodies in climate models. Such developments have started in the French IPSL climate model with the implementation of a one‐dimensional freshwater lake model (FLake). To answer the questions raised by these new developments, such as the lake differentiation and related model parameters, we analyze spatial distributions of lake characteristics in the whole world to perform a global sensitivity analysis of the model parameters. Our results show the respective roles of the depth, fetch, thermocline, sediment, and radiative (albedo and light extinction coefficient) parameters in different climate conditions and at different time scales. Some avenues for further implementation and model parameters calibration are finally given.
Key Points
FLake model parameters sensitivities on lake surface temperature and sensible and latent heat fluxes are analyzed
Parameter sensitivities to surface variables vary with depth, climate, and season
Respective roles of depth, fetch, surface albedo, light extinction, and thermocline shape coefficients are quantified
In China, irrigation is widespread in 40.7% cropland to sustain crop yields. By its action on water cycle, irrigation affects water resources and local climate. In this study, a new irrigation ...module, including flood and paddy irrigation technologies, was developed in the ORCHIDEE‐CROP land surface model which describes crop phenology and growth in order to estimate irrigation demands over China from 1982 to 2014. Three simulations were performed including NI (no irrigation), IR (with irrigation limited by local water resources), and FI (with irrigation demand fulfilled). Observations and census data were used to validate the simulations. Results showed that the estimated irrigation water withdrawal (
W) based on IR and FI scenarios bracket statistical
W with fair spatial agreements (
r=0.68±0.07;
p<0.01). Improving irrigation efficiency was found to be the dominant factor leading to the observed
W decrease. By comparing simulated total water storage (TWS) with GRACE observations, we found that simulated TWS with irrigation well explained the TWS variation over China. However, our simulation overestimated the seasonality of TWS in the Yangtze River Basin due to ignoring regulation of artificial reservoirs. The observed TWS decrease in the Yellow River Basin caused by groundwater depletion was not totally captured in our simulation, but it can be inferred by combining simulated TWS with census data. Moreover, we demonstrated that land use change tended to drive
W locally but had little effect on total
W over China due to water resources limitation.
Key Points
A new irrigation module is developed in ORCHIDEE including drip, flood, and paddy irrigation
Simulations can explain broad scale patterns and the trends of irrigation amount from census data
Irrigation efficiency and land use change are key factors affecting the trend of irrigation
Among the three sites distributed along the West African latitudinal gradient in the AMMA-CATCH observation system, the experimental setup in the Niamey area of south-west Niger samples the ...cultivated Sahel environment, for hydrological, vegetation and land surface processes. The objective is to investigate relationships between climate, land cover, and the water cycle, in a rapidly changing semiarid environment. This paper first presents the main characteristics of the area, where previous research, including the EPSAT and HAPEX-Sahel experiments, had evidenced a widespread decadal increase in water resources, concurrently with severe drought conditions. The specifics of AMMA-CATCH research and data acquisition at this site, over the long-term (∼2001–2010) and enhanced (∼2005–2008) observation periods, are introduced. Objectives and observation strategy are explained, and the main characteristics of instrument deployment are detailed. A very large number of parameters – covering rainfall, vegetation ecophysiology, phenology and production, surface fluxes of energy, water vapour and CO
2, runoff and sediment, pond water, soil moisture, and groundwater – were monitored at local to meso scales in a nested structure of sites. The current state of knowledge is summarized, connecting processes and patterns of variation for rainfall, vegetation/land cover, and the terrestrial hydrologic cycle. The central role of land use and of its spectacular change in recent decades is highlighted. This paper provides substantial background information that sets the context for papers relating to the south-west Niger site in this AMMA-CATCH special issue.
Processes that describe the distribution of vegetation and ecosystem succession after disturbance are an important component of dynamic global vegetation models (DGVMs). The vegetation dynamics ...module (ORC-VD) within the process-based ecosystem model ORCHIDEE (Organizing Carbon and Hydrology in Dynamic Ecosystems) has not been updated and evaluated since many years and is known to produce unrealistic results. This study presents a new parameterization of ORC-VD for mid- to high-latitude regions in the Northern Hemisphere, including processes that influence the existence, mortality and competition between tree functional types. A new set of metrics is also proposed to quantify the performance of ORC-VD, using up to five different data sets of satellite land cover, forest biomass from remote sensing and inventories, a data-driven estimate of gross primary productivity (GPP) and two gridded data sets of soil organic carbon content. The scoring of ORC-VD derived from these metrics integrates uncertainties in the observational data sets. This multi-data set evaluation framework is a generic method that could be applied to the evaluation of other DGVM models. The results of the original ORC-VD published in 2005 for mid- to high-latitudes and of the new parameterization are evaluated against the above-described data sets. Significant improvements were found in the modeling of the distribution of tree functional types north of 40° N. Three additional sensitivity runs were carried out to separate the impact of different processes or drivers on simulated vegetation distribution, including soil freezing which limits net primary production through soil moisture availability in the root zone, elevated CO2 concentration since 1850, and the effects of frequency and severity of extreme cold events during the spin-up phase of the model.
In Earth system modelling, a description of the energy budget of the vegetated surface layer is fundamental as it determines the meteorological conditions in the planetary boundary layer and as such ...contributes to the atmospheric conditions and its circulation. The energy budget in most Earth system models has been based on a big-leaf approach, with averaging schemes that represent in-canopy processes. Furthermore, to be stable, that is to say, over large time steps and without large iterations, a surface layer model should be capable of implicit coupling to the atmospheric model. Surface models with large time steps, however, have difficulties in reproducing consistently the energy balance in field observations. Here we outline a newly developed numerical model for energy budget simulation, as a component of the land surface model ORCHIDEE-CAN (Organising Carbon and Hydrology In Dynamic Ecosystems – CANopy). This new model implements techniques from single-site canopy models in a practical way. It includes representation of in-canopy transport, a multi-layer long-wave radiation budget, height-specific calculation of aerodynamic and stomatal conductance, and interaction with the bare-soil flux within the canopy space. Significantly, it avoids iterations over the height of the canopy and so maintains implicit coupling to the atmospheric model LMDz (Laboratoire de Météorologie Dynamique Zoomed model). As a first test, the model is evaluated against data from both an intensive measurement campaign and longer-term eddy-covariance measurements for the intensively studied Eucalyptus stand at Tumbarumba, Australia. The model performs well in replicating both diurnal and annual cycles of energy and water fluxes, as well as the vertical gradients of temperature and of sensible heat fluxes.
The
SEtHyS_Savannah model Saux-Picart et al., submitted for publication.
SEtHyS_Savannah: a multiple source land surface model applied to sahelian landscapes. Agricultural and Forest Meteorology was ...developed as an extension of the SEtHyS land surface model to simulate the water and energy fluxes over dry savannah landscapes. The vegetation cover is represented by a two layer model and a mulch approach is used for the soil description. The
SEtHyS_Savannah model was regionalized over the AMMA-Niger super-site (about 50
km by
40
km), with the help of remote sensing data. The model uses a regular 1km grid and each cell is divided in sub-grid patches in order to represent land cover and soil heterogeneities (tile approach). The vegetation cover parameters were prescribed according to the land cover map and the seasonal evolution of the Leaf Area Index (LAI), both derived from SPOT-HRV (Satellite Pour l’Observation de la Terre – High Resolution Visible) data imagery. The atmospheric forcing was assumed homogeneous over the area and provided by a meteorological station installed at the Fakara experimental site. The surface water and energy budgets were simulated over a one-year period (2005) at a 5-min time step and validated against MSG-SEVIRI (Meteosat Second Generation – Spinning Enhanced Visible and Infra-red Imager) land surface temperature and ENVISAT-ASAR (ENVIronnement SATellite – Advanced Synthetic Aperture Radar) soil humidity products. The results show realistic surface fluxes and good agreement with the MSG-SEVIRI temperature observations. The soil moisture comparison presents significant correlation but large root mean square errors. These discrepancies are the consequence of both the use of a non-spatialized atmospheric forcing and to residual vegetation effects on the radar signal. Despite these uncertainties, the results increase confidence in the model representation of Sahelian soil–vegetation processes and open new perspectives to quantify the effects of vegetation changes on evapotranspiration and runoff over the region.
The Indian and French Space Agencies, ISRO and CNES, have conceptualized a space-borne Thermal Infrared Reflectance (TIR) mission, TRISHNA (Thermal infRared Imaging Satellite for High-resolution ...Natural Resource Assessment). The primary design drivers of TRISHNA are the monitoring of (i) terrestrial water stress and use, and of (ii) coastal and continental water. A suit of four TIR bands and six optical bands is planned. The TIR bands will be centred at 8.6 μm, 9.1 μm, 10.3 μm and 11.5 μm to provide noon-night global observations at 57m nadir resolution over land and coastal regions. The field of view (FOV) is ±34° and the orbit of 761 km altitude was designed to allow 3 sub-cycle acquisitions during the 8-day cycle. The optical bands correspond to blue, green, red, and NIR plus two SWIR bands at 1.38 μm and 1.61 μm. The green, red, NIR and the 1.61 μm SWIR bands will have better radiometry quality than those of AWiFS. ISRO and CNES will develop optical and TIR payloads, respectively. Assessing evapotranspiration and furthermore Gross and Net Primary Productivity (GPP and NPP) will in turn assist in quantifying water use in rainfed and irrigated agriculture, water stress and water use efficiency, with expected applications to agricultural drought and early warning, crop yield prediction, water allocation, implementation of water rights, crop insurance business and agro-advisories to farmers. The other scientific objectives of TRISHNA are also briefly described. TRISHNA instrument will fly aboard a ISRO spacecraft scheduled to be launched from 2024 for a minimum period of 5 years’ mission lifetime.
The Somme River Basin is located above a chalk aquifer and the discharge of the somme River is highly influenced by groundwater inflow (90% of river discharge is baseflow). In 2001, the Somme River ...Basin suffered from a major flood causing damages estimated to 100 million euro (Deneux and Martin, 2001). The purpose of the present research is to evaluate the ability of four hydrologic models to reproduce flood events in the Somme River Basin over an 18-year period, by comparison with observed river discharge and piezometric level as well as satellite-derived extents of flooded area. The models used differ in their computation of surface water budget and in their representation of saturated and unsaturated zones. One model needed structural modification to be able to accurately simulate the riverflows of the Somme river. The models obtained fair to good simulations of the observed piezometric levels, but they all overestimate the piezometric level after flooding, possibly because of a simplistic representation of deep unsaturated flow. Models differ in their annual partition of the infiltration of water within the root zone (mostly driven by simulated evapotranspiration), but these differences are attenuated by water transfers within the saturated and unsaturated zone. As a consequence, the inter-model dispersion of the computed annual baseflow is reduced. The aquifer overflow areas simulated during flooding compare well with local data and satellite images. The models showed that this overflow occurs almost every year in the same areas (in floodplain), and that the flooding of 2001 was characterized by an increase in the quantity of the overflow and not much by a spreading of the overflow areas. Inconsistencies between river discharge and piezometric levels suggest that further investigation are needed to estimate the relative influence of unsaturated and saturated zones on the hydrodynamics of the Somme River Basin.
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