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Abstract
This paper reviews developments for the Community Land Model, version 4 (CLM4), examines the land surface climate simulation of the Community Climate System Model, version 4 (CCSM4) compared to CCSM3, and assesses new earth system features of CLM4 within CCSM4. CLM4 incorporates a broad set of improvements including additions of a carbon–nitrogen (CN) biogeochemical model, an urban canyon model, and transient land cover and land use change, as well as revised soil and snow submodels.
Several aspects of the surface climate simulation are improved in CCSM4. Improvements in the simulation of soil water storage, evapotranspiration, surface albedo, and permafrost that are apparent in offline CLM4 simulations are generally retained in CCSM4. The global land air temperature bias is reduced and the annual cycle is improved in many locations, especially at high latitudes. The global land precipitation bias is larger in CCSM4 because of bigger wet biases in central and southern Africa and Australia.
New earth system capabilities are assessed. The present-day air temperature within urban areas is warmer than surrounding rural areas by 1°–2°C, which is comparable to or greater than the change in climate occurring over the last 130 years. The snow albedo feedback is more realistic and the radiative forcing of snow aerosol deposition is calculated as +0.083 W m−2 for present day. The land carbon flux due to land use, wildfire, and net ecosystem production is a source of carbon to the atmosphere throughout most of the historical simulation. CCSM4 is increasingly suited for studies of the role of land processes in climate and climate change.
Abstract
This paper reviews developments for the Community Land Model, version 4 (CLM4), examines the land surface climate simulation of the Community Climate System Model, version 4 (CCSM4) compared to CCSM3, and assesses new earth system features of CLM4 within CCSM4. CLM4 incorporates a broad set of improvements including additions of a carbon–nitrogen (CN) biogeochemical model, an urban canyon model, and transient land cover and land use change, as well as revised soil and snow submodels.
Several aspects of the surface climate simulation are improved in CCSM4. Improvements in the simulation of soil water storage, evapotranspiration, surface albedo, and permafrost that are apparent in offline CLM4 simulations are generally retained in CCSM4. The global land air temperature bias is reduced and the annual cycle is improved in many locations, especially at high latitudes. The global land precipitation bias is larger in CCSM4 because of bigger wet biases in central and southern Africa and Australia.
New earth system capabilities are assessed. The present-day air temperature within urban areas is warmer than surrounding rural areas by 1°–2°C, which is comparable to or greater than the change in climate occurring over the last 130 years. The snow albedo feedback is more realistic and the radiative forcing of snow aerosol deposition is calculated as +0.083 W m−2 for present day. The land carbon flux due to land use, wildfire, and net ecosystem production is a source of carbon to the atmosphere throughout most of the historical simulation. CCSM4 is increasingly suited for studies of the role of land processes in climate and climate change.
Abstract
The Community Earth System Model, version 1 (CESM1) is evaluated with two coupled atmosphere–land simulations. The CTRL (control) simulation represents crops as unmanaged grasses, while CROP represents a crop managed simulation that includes special algorithms for midlatitude corn, soybean, and cereal phenology and carbon allocation. CROP has a more realistic leaf area index (LAI) for crops than CTRL. CROP reduces winter LAI and represents the spring planting and fall harvest explicitly. At the peak of the growing season, CROP simulates higher crop LAI. These changes generally reduce the latent heat flux but not around peak LAI (late spring/early summer). In midwestern North America, where corn, soybean, and cereal abundance is high, simulated peak summer precipitation declines and agrees better with observations, particularly when crops emerge late as is found from a late planting sensitivity simulation (LateP). Differences between the CROP and LateP simulations underscore the importance of simulating crop planting and harvest dates correctly. On the biogeochemistry side, the annual cycle of net ecosystem exchange (NEE) also improves in CROP relative to Ameriflux site observations. For a global perspective, the authors diagnose annual cycles of CO2 from the simulated NEE (CO2 is not prognostic in these simulations) and compare against representative GLOBALVIEW monitoring stations. The authors find an increased (thus also improved) amplitude of the annual cycle in CROP. These regional and global-scale refinements from improvements in the simulated plant phenology have promising implications for the development of the CESM and particularly for simulations with prognostic atmospheric CO2.
Abstract
The Community Earth System Model, version 1 (CESM1) is evaluated with two coupled atmosphere–land simulations. The CTRL (control) simulation represents crops as unmanaged grasses, while CROP represents a crop managed simulation that includes special algorithms for midlatitude corn, soybean, and cereal phenology and carbon allocation. CROP has a more realistic leaf area index (LAI) for crops than CTRL. CROP reduces winter LAI and represents the spring planting and fall harvest explicitly. At the peak of the growing season, CROP simulates higher crop LAI. These changes generally reduce the latent heat flux but not around peak LAI (late spring/early summer). In midwestern North America, where corn, soybean, and cereal abundance is high, simulated peak summer precipitation declines and agrees better with observations, particularly when crops emerge late as is found from a late planting sensitivity simulation (LateP). Differences between the CROP and LateP simulations underscore the importance of simulating crop planting and harvest dates correctly. On the biogeochemistry side, the annual cycle of net ecosystem exchange (NEE) also improves in CROP relative to Ameriflux site observations. For a global perspective, the authors diagnose annual cycles of CO2 from the simulated NEE (CO2 is not prognostic in these simulations) and compare against representative GLOBALVIEW monitoring stations. The authors find an increased (thus also improved) amplitude of the annual cycle in CROP. These regional and global-scale refinements from improvements in the simulated plant phenology have promising implications for the development of the CESM and particularly for simulations with prognostic atmospheric CO2.
Abstract
To assess the climate impacts of historical and projected land cover change in the Community Climate System Model, version 4 (CCSM4), new time series of transient Community Land Model, version 4 (CLM4) plant functional type (PFT) and wood harvest parameters have been developed. The new parameters capture the dynamics of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project phase 5 (CMIP5) land cover change and wood harvest trajectories for the historical period from 1850 to 2005 and for the four representative concentration pathway (RCP) scenarios from 2006 to 2100. Analysis of the biogeochemical impacts of land cover change in CCSM4 reveals that the model produced a historical cumulative land use flux of 127.7 PgC from 1850 to 2005, which is in general agreement with other global estimates of 156 PgC for the same period. The biogeophysical impacts of the transient land cover change parameters were cooling of the near-surface atmosphere over land by −0.1°C, through increased surface albedo and reduced shortwave radiation absorption. When combined with other transient climate forcings, the higher albedo from land cover change was counteracted by decreasing snow albedo from black carbon deposition and high-latitude warming. The future CCSM4 RCP simulations showed that the CLM4 transient PFT parameters can be used to represent a wide range of land cover change scenarios. In the reforestation scenario of RCP 4.5, CCSM4 simulated a drawdown of 67.3 PgC from the atmosphere into the terrestrial ecosystem and product pools. By contrast the RCP 8.5 scenario with deforestation and high wood harvest resulted in the release of 30.3 PgC currently stored in the ecosystem.
Abstract
To assess the climate impacts of historical and projected land cover change in the Community Climate System Model, version 4 (CCSM4), new time series of transient Community Land Model, version 4 (CLM4) plant functional type (PFT) and wood harvest parameters have been developed. The new parameters capture the dynamics of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project phase 5 (CMIP5) land cover change and wood harvest trajectories for the historical period from 1850 to 2005 and for the four representative concentration pathway (RCP) scenarios from 2006 to 2100. Analysis of the biogeochemical impacts of land cover change in CCSM4 reveals that the model produced a historical cumulative land use flux of 127.7 PgC from 1850 to 2005, which is in general agreement with other global estimates of 156 PgC for the same period. The biogeophysical impacts of the transient land cover change parameters were cooling of the near-surface atmosphere over land by −0.1°C, through increased surface albedo and reduced shortwave radiation absorption. When combined with other transient climate forcings, the higher albedo from land cover change was counteracted by decreasing snow albedo from black carbon deposition and high-latitude warming. The future CCSM4 RCP simulations showed that the CLM4 transient PFT parameters can be used to represent a wide range of land cover change scenarios. In the reforestation scenario of RCP 4.5, CCSM4 simulated a drawdown of 67.3 PgC from the atmosphere into the terrestrial ecosystem and product pools. By contrast the RCP 8.5 scenario with deforestation and high wood harvest resulted in the release of 30.3 PgC currently stored in the ecosystem.
