A New Global Storage‐Area‐Depth Data Set for Modeling Reservoirs in Land Surface and Earth System Models

Abstract. Most Earth system models are based on grid-averaged soil columns that do not communicate with one another, and that average over considerable sub-grid heterogeneity in land surface properties, precipitation (P), and potential evapotranspiration (PET). These models also typically ignore topographically driven lateral redistribution of water (either as groundwater or surface flows), both within and between model grid cells. Here, we present a first attempt to quantify the effects of spatial heterogeneity and lateral redistribution on grid-cell-averaged evapotranspiration (ET) as seen from the atmosphere over heterogeneous landscapes. Our approach uses Budyko curves, as a simple model of ET as a function of atmospheric forcing by P and PET. From these Budyko curves, we derive a simple sub-grid closure relation that quantifies how spatial heterogeneity affects average ET as seen from the atmosphere. We show that averaging over sub-grid heterogeneity in P and PET, as typical Earth system models do, leads to overestimations of average ET. For a sample high-relief grid cell in the Himalayas, this overestimation bias is shown to be roughly 12 %; for adjacent lower-relief grid cells, it is substantially smaller. We use a similar approach to derive sub-grid closure relations that quantify how lateral redistribution of water could alter average ET as seen from the atmosphere. We derive expressions for the maximum possible effect of lateral redistribution on average ET, and the amount of lateral redistribution required to achieve this effect, using only estimates of P and PET in possible source and recipient locations as inputs. We show that where the aridity index P/PET increases with altitude, gravitationally driven lateral redistribution will increase average ET (and models that overlook lateral redistribution will underestimate average ET). Conversely, where the aridity index P/PET decreases with altitude, gravitationally driven lateral redistribution will decrease average ET. The effects of both sub-grid heterogeneity and lateral redistribution will be most pronounced where P is inversely correlated with PET across the landscape. Our analysis provides first-order estimates of the magnitudes of these sub-grid effects, as a guide for more detailed modeling and analysis.

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Impact of improved land model depth and hydrology on climate change projections

10.5194/egusphere-egu2020-19277 ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Norman Steinert ◽

Fidel González-Rouco ◽

Stefan Hagemann ◽

Philipp de Vrese ◽

Elena García-Bustamante ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Land Surface ◽

Earth System ◽

Energy Propagation ◽

Near Surface ◽

Bottom Boundary ◽

System Models ◽

Model Component ◽

And Storage ◽

Earth System Models

The representation of the thermal and hydrological state in the land model component of Earth System Models is crucial to have a realistic simulation of subsurface processes and the coupling between the atmo-, lito- and biosphere. There is evidence suggesting an inaccurate simulation of subsurface thermodynamics in current-generation Earth System Models, which have Land Surface Models that are too shallow. In simulations with a bottom boundary too close to the surface, the energy propagation and spatio-temporal variability of subsurface temperatures are affected. This potentially restrains the simulation of land-air interactions and subsurface phenomena, e.g. energy/moisture balance and storage capacity, freeze/thaw cycles and permafrost evolution. We introduce modifications for a deeper soil into the JSBACH soil model component of the MPI-ESM for climate projections of the 21st century. Subsurface layers are added progressively to increase the bottom boundary depth from 10m to 1400m. This leads to near-surface cooling of the soil and encourages regional terrestrial energy uptake by one order of magnitude and more. The depth-changes in the soil also have implications for the hydrological regime, in which the moisture between the surface and the bedrock is sensitive to variations in the thermal regime. Additionally, we compare two different global soil parameter datasets that have major implications for the vertical distribution and availability of soil moisture and its exchange with the land surface. The implementation of supercool water and water phase changes in the soil creates a coupling between the soil thermal and hydrological regimes. In both cases of bottom boundary and water depth changes, we explore the sensitivity of JSBACH from the perspective of changes in the soil thermodynamics, energy balance and storage, as well as the effect of including freezing and thawing processes and their influence on the simulation of permafrost areas in the Northern Hemisphere high latitudes. The latter is of particular interest due to their vulnerability to long-term climate change.

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Two-way coupling between the sub-grid land surface and river networks in Earth system models

10.5194/gmd-2020-291 ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Nathaniel W. Chaney ◽

Laura Torres-Rojas ◽

Noemi Vergopolan ◽

Colby K. Fisher

Keyword(s):

High Resolution ◽

Land Surface ◽

Environmental Data ◽

Added Value ◽

Earth System ◽

Field Scale ◽

System Models ◽

Routing Scheme ◽

Earth System Models ◽

River Routing

Abstract. Over the past decade, there has been appreciable progress towards modeling the water, energy, and carbon cycles at field-scales (10–100 m) over continental to global extents. One such approach, named HydroBlocks, accomplishes this task while maintaining computational efficiency via sub-grid tiles, or Hydrologic Response Units (HRUs), learned via a hierarchical clustering approach from available global high-resolution environmental data. However, until now, there has yet to be a macroscale river routing approach that is able to leverage HydroBlocks' approach to sub-grid heterogeneity, thus limiting the added value of field-scale land surface modeling in Earth System Models (e.g., riparian zone dynamics, irrigation from surface water, and interactive floodplains). This paper introduces a novel dynamic river routing scheme in HydroBlocks that is intertwined with the modeled field-scale land surface heterogeneity. The primary features of the routing scheme include: 1) the fine-scale river network of each macroscale grid cell's is derived from very high resolution (

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Use of various remote sensing land cover products for PFT mapping over Siberia

Earth System Science Data Discussions ◽

10.5194/essdd-6-255-2013 ◽

2013 ◽

Vol 6 (1) ◽

pp. 255-296

Author(s):

C. Ottlé ◽

J. Lescure ◽

F. Maignan ◽

B. Poulter ◽

T. Wang ◽

...

Keyword(s):

High Resolution ◽

Land Cover ◽

Land Surface ◽

Land Cover Classification ◽

Classification Systems ◽

Tree Cover ◽

Surface Model ◽

Earth System ◽

System Models ◽

Earth System Models

Abstract. High-latitude ecosystems play an important role in the global carbon cycle and in regulating the climate system and are presently undergoing rapid environmental change. Accurate land cover datasets are required to both document these changes as well as to provide land-surface information for benchmarking and initializing earth system models. Earth system models also require specific land cover classification systems based on plant functional types, rather than species or ecosystems, and so post-processing of existing land cover data is often required. This study compares over Siberia, multiple land cover datasets against one another and with auxiliary data to identify key uncertainties that contribute to variability in Plant Functional Type (PFT) classifications that would introduce errors in earth system modeling. Land cover classification systems from GLC 2000, GlobCover 2005 and 2009, and MODIS collections 5 and 5.1 are first aggregated to a common legend, and then compared to high-resolution land cover classification systems, continuous vegetation fields (MODIS-VCF) and satellite-derived tree heights (to discriminate against sparse, shrub, and forest vegetation). The GlobCover dataset, with a lower threshold for tree cover and taller tree heights and a better spatial resolution, tends to have better distributions of tree cover compared to high-resolution data. It has therefore been chosen to build new PFTs maps for the ORCHIDEE land surface model at 1 km scale. Compared to the original PFT dataset, the new PFT maps based on GlobCover 2005 and an updated cross-walking approach mainly differ in the characterization of forests and degree of tree cover. The partition of grasslands and bare soils now appears more realistic compared with ground-truth data. This new vegetation map provides a framework for further development of new PFTs in the ORCHIDEE model like shrubs, lichens and mosses, to better represent the water and carbon cycles in northern latitudes. Updated land cover datasets are critical for improving and maintaining the relevance of earth system models for assessing climate and human impacts on biogeochemistry and biophysics. The new PFT map at 5 km scale is available for download from the PANGAEA website, at: doi:10.1594/PANGAEA.810709.

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Modeling Sediment Yield in Land Surface and Earth System Models: Model Comparison, Development, and Evaluation

Journal of Advances in Modeling Earth Systems ◽

10.1029/2017ms001270 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 10 (9) ◽

pp. 2192-2213 ◽

Cited By ~ 5

Author(s):

Zeli Tan ◽

L. Ruby Leung ◽

Hong‐Yi Li ◽

Teklu Tesfa

Keyword(s):

Sediment Yield ◽

Land Surface ◽

Model Comparison ◽

Earth System ◽

System Models ◽

Earth System Models

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Adding some discussion on (emerged) issues when using the data in land surface models of earth system models

10.5194/gmd-2019-360-sc1 ◽

2020 ◽

Keyword(s):

Land Surface ◽

Earth System ◽

Land Surface Models ◽

System Models ◽

Surface Models ◽

Earth System Models

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Leveraging unsupervised learning for optimizing the number of sub-grid tiles for land surface modeling over the Contiguous United States

10.5194/egusphere-egu21-7952 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Laura Torres-Rojas ◽

Noemi Vergopolan ◽

Jonathan D. Herman ◽

Nathaniel W. Chaney

Keyword(s):

United States ◽

Land Surface ◽

Grid Cell ◽

Earth System ◽

Environmental Characteristics ◽

System Models ◽

Parameter Combination ◽

Stable Conditions ◽

Tile Complexity ◽

Earth System Models

The representation of land surface&#8217;s sub-grid heterogeneity in Earth System models remains a persistent challenge. The evolution of grid-cell partitioning techniques has evolved from user-defined equally sized tiles (Chen et al., 1997) to structural partition techniques based on vegetation or soil spatial distribution (Melton & Arora, 2014), and finally, to advanced clustering techniques, based on the concept of Hydrological Response Units (HRU) (Chaney et al., 2018). These sub-grid tiling schemes for Land Surface Models (LSM) have emerged as efficient and effective options to represent sub-grid heterogeneity. However, such approaches rely on an arbitrarily-defined number of tiles per macroscale grid cell with no assurance of a robust representation of heterogeneity. To address this challenge, we introduce a physically coherent approach that uses a Random Forest Model (RFM) to precompute the optimal tile configuration per macro-grid cell. An RFM is trained on a set of environmental covariates, their spatial organization features over the modeling domain (i.e., correlation lengths), and hydrological target-variables errors of several model outputs.We assemble and run the HydroBlocks LSM for 100 tiles&#8217; configurations for 100 domains of 0.5x0.5-degree resolution in the Contiguous United States (CONUS). The tiles&#8217; configuration is defined by two clustering algorithm parameters and one height discretization one. From this parameter combination, 10,000 simulations emerged. For each simulation, we compiled the spatial standard deviation of specific hydrological target-variables and evaluated the tiles&#8217; configuration convergence by comparing various multi-objective optimization methodologies to determine the optimal compromise solutions on each study domain. Preliminary results show that as the number of tiles increases, the hydrological fluxes and states converge toward stable conditions. With the optimal parameter combination set for each domain and information on the environmental characteristics, an RFM is trained to predict the optimal cluster configuration. Using this approach, we demonstrate how a reduced-order model can effectively compute a priori the appropriate tile complexity based solely on environmental characteristics.ReferencesChaney, N. W. el al. (2018). Harnessing big data to rethink land heterogeneity in Earth system models. Hydrology and Earth System Sciences, 22(6), 3311&#8211;3330. https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-22-3311-2018Chen, T. H. et al. (1997). Cabauw experimental results from the Project for Intercomparison of Land-Surface Parameterization Schemes. Journal of Climate, 10(6), 1194&#8211;1215. https://doi.org/10.1175/1520-0442(1997)010<1194:CERFTP>2.0.CO;2Melton, J. R., & Arora, V. K. (2014). Sub-grid scale representation of vegetation in global land surface schemes: implications for estimation of the terrestrial carbon sink. Biogeosciences, 11, 1021&#8211;1036. https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-11-1021-2014

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Where are the peatlands? Comparing two global peatland maps through L-band brightness temperature simulations

10.5194/egusphere-egu21-15134 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Michel Bechtold ◽

Sarith P. Mahanama ◽

Rolf H. Reichle ◽

Randal D. Koster ◽

Gabrielle J. M. De Lannoy

Keyword(s):

Soil Moisture ◽

Brightness Temperature ◽

Land Surface ◽

Land Surface Model ◽

Open Loop ◽

Surface Model ◽

Earth System ◽

System Models ◽

L Band ◽

Earth System Models

Mapping the global peatland distribution is important for embedding peatland processes into Earth System Models. Peatland maps are typically compiled from nation-specific soil or ecosystem maps or based on machine learning tools trained on such data. Here, we evaluate the performance of a land surface model with two different peatland map inputs in providing critical land surface estimates (soil moisture, temperature) to a Radiative Transfer Model (RTM) for L-band brightness temperature (Tb). We hypothesize that an improved performance of the land surface model in Tb space indicates a better spatial peatland distribution input within the footprint of Tb observations (~40 km).We employ the NASA Catchment Land Surface Model (CLSM) with a recently added module for peatland hydrology (PEATCLSM modules). We run this model at a 9-km EASEv2 resolution over the Northern Hemisphere for two soil maps that differ in their peatland distributions. The applied soil distributions are: (MAP1) a combination of the Harmonized World Soil Database and the State Soil Geographic Database, also used to generate the Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) Level-4 soil moisture product, and (MAP2) a hybrid of HWSD-STATSGO and the &#8216;PEATMAP&#8217; product, which is mainly compiled from national peatland maps. MAP2 indicates ~30 % more peatland area over the Northern Hemisphere. For both peat distributions, CLSM is run and parameters of the RTM are calibrated with 10 years of multi-angular L-band Tb observations from the Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity SMOS mission. Afterwards, CLSM is run together with the calibrated RTM within a data assimilation system, with and without (open-loop) assimilating SMAP Tb observations, for the period 2015-2020. Our results demonstrate that Tb misfits (in both the open-loop and assimilation runs) are reduced in the areas with the largest differences in peat distribution, thus indicating a basic validity of assuming a peatland-like hydrological dynamics for the larger peat extent of MAP2. Results will be discussed in the context of how peatlands are defined in global peatland maps and the question of what is typically modeled as a peatland in Earth System Models. We propose the evaluation of future releases of peatland maps in Tb space as a tool to evaluate their suitability for implementation into Earth System Models.

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New Vegetation Radiative Transfer Schemes for Land Surface Models

10.5194/egusphere-egu2020-10282 ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Tristan Quaife

Keyword(s):

Radiative Transfer ◽

Computational Efficiency ◽

Land Surface ◽

Multiple Scales ◽

Transfer Problem ◽

Building Blocks ◽

Surface Model ◽

Earth System ◽

System Models ◽

Earth System Models

The land surface components of climate and Earth system models tend to utilise relatively simple representations of vegetation radiative transfer processes to determine key land surface properties such as albedo, land surface temperature and the absorption of sunlight for photosynthesis. This simplicity is driven, in large part, by a need for computational efficiency. However, a growing number of studies have pointed to the need for more complex radiative transfer in these models.An almost ubiquitous assumption in such radiative transfer schemes is that a vegetation canopy can be represented by a plane-parallel, turbid medium &#8211; a perfectly flat box in which scattering elements (i.e. leaves, branches, trunks, etc.) are randomly distributed. Real canopies typically exhibit quite complex, non-random structures often involving the clumping of leaves and branches at multiple scales. Furthermore, the optical properties of canopies are typically assumed to be vertically and horizontally homogeneous which does not allow for realistic representation of, for example, forest stands with mixed species or understory vegetation.This presentation examines recent developments that have the potential to overcome these and other deficiencies in land surface model radiative transfer schemes, whilst maintaining sufficient computational efficiency to make them viable for inclusion in climate and Earth system models. This is achieved by using the same solutions to the transfer problem as currently employed in climate models as the building blocks to construct canopies that can vary both vertically and horizontally.&#160;&#160;

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