Articles | Volume 10, issue 7
https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-10-2761-2017
© Author(s) 2017. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.
the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.
https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-10-2761-2017
© Author(s) 2017. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.
the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.
Development and technical paper
| 
17 Jul 2017
Development and technical paper |
| 17 Jul 2017
Tiling soil textures for terrestrial ecosystem modelling via clustering analysis: a case study with CLASS-CTEM (version 2.1)
Climate Research Division, Environment and Climate Change Canada, Victoria, B.C., Canada
Reinel Sospedra-Alfonso
Canadian Centre for Climate Modelling and Analysis, Climate Research Division, Environment and Climate Change Canada, Victoria, B.C., Canada
Kelly E. McCusker
Canadian Centre for Climate Modelling and Analysis, Climate Research Division, Environment and Climate Change Canada, Victoria, B.C., Canada
School of Earth and Ocean Sciences, University of Victoria, Victoria, B.C., Canada
now at: Department of Atmospheric Sciences, University of Washington, Seattle, USA
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Christian Seiler, Joe R. Melton, Vivek K. Arora, and Libo Wang
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Jade Skye, Joe R. Melton, Colin Goldblatt, Louis Saumier, Angela Gallego-Sala, Michelle Garneau, R. Scott Winton, Erick B. Bahati, Juan C. Benavides, Lee Fedorchuk, Gérard Imani, Carol Kagaba, Frank Kansiime, Mariusz Lamentowicz, Michel Mbasi, Daria Wochal, Sambor Czerwiński, Jacek Landowski, Joanna Landowska, Vincent Maire, Minna M. Väliranta, Matthew Warren, Lydia E. S. Cole, Marissa A. Davies, Erik A. Lilleskov, Jingjing Sun, and Yuwan Wang
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Preprint under review for ESSD
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Hanyu Liu, Felix R. Vogel, Misa Ishizawa, Zhen Zhang, Benjamin Poulter, Doug E. J. Worthy, Leyang Feng, Anna L. Gagné-Landmann, Ao Chen, Ziting Huang, Dylan C. Gaeta, Joe R. Melton, Douglas Chan, Vineet Yadav, Deborah Huntzinger, and Scot M. Miller
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We find that the state-of-the-art process-based methane flux models have both lower flux magnitude and reduced inter-model uncertainty compared to a previous model inter-comparison from over a decade ago. Despite these improvements, methane flux estimates from process-based models are still likely too high compared to atmospheric observations. We also find that models with simpler parameterizations often result in better agreement with atmospheric observations in high-latitude North America.
Konstantin Gregor, Benjamin F. Meyer, Tillmann Gaida, Victor Justo Vasquez, Karina Bett-Williams, Matthew Forrest, João P. Darela-Filho, Sam Rabin, Marcos Longo, Joe R. Melton, Johan Nord, Peter Anthoni, Vladislav Bastrikov, Thomas Colligan, Christine Delire, Michael C. Dietze, George Hurtt, Akihiko Ito, Lasse T. Keetz, Jürgen Knauer, Johannes Köster, Tzu-Shun Lin, Lei Ma, Marie Minvielle, Stefan Olin, Sebastian Ostberg, Hao Shi, Reiner Schnur, Urs Schönenberger, Qing Sun, Peter E. Thornton, and Anja Rammig
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This preprint is open for discussion and under review for Geoscientific Model Development (GMD).
Short summary
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Earth Syst. Sci. Data, 17, 1873–1958, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-17-1873-2025, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-17-1873-2025, 2025
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Methane (CH4) is the second most important human-influenced greenhouse gas in terms of climate forcing after carbon dioxide (CO2). A consortium of multi-disciplinary scientists synthesise and update the budget of the sources and sinks of CH4. This edition benefits from important progress in estimating emissions from lakes and ponds, reservoirs, and streams and rivers. For the 2010s decade, global CH4 emissions are estimated at 575 Tg CH4 yr-1, including ~65 % from anthropogenic sources.
Libo Wang, Lawrence Mudryk, Joe R. Melton, Colleen Mortimer, Jason Cole, Gesa Meyer, Paul Bartlett, and Mickaël Lalande
EGUsphere, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2025-1264, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2025-1264, 2025
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This study shows that an alternate snow cover fraction (SCF) parameterization significantly improves SCF simulated in the CLASSIC model in mountainous areas for all three choices of meteorological datasets. Annual mean bias, unbiased root mean squared area, and correlation improve by 75 %, 32 %, and 7 % when evaluated with MODIS SCF observations over the Northern Hemisphere. We also link relative biases in the meteorological forcing data to differences in simulated snow water equivalent and SCF.
Zhen Zhang, Benjamin Poulter, Joe R. Melton, William J. Riley, George H. Allen, David J. Beerling, Philippe Bousquet, Josep G. Canadell, Etienne Fluet-Chouinard, Philippe Ciais, Nicola Gedney, Peter O. Hopcroft, Akihiko Ito, Robert B. Jackson, Atul K. Jain, Katherine Jensen, Fortunat Joos, Thomas Kleinen, Sara H. Knox, Tingting Li, Xin Li, Xiangyu Liu, Kyle McDonald, Gavin McNicol, Paul A. Miller, Jurek Müller, Prabir K. Patra, Changhui Peng, Shushi Peng, Zhangcai Qin, Ryan M. Riggs, Marielle Saunois, Qing Sun, Hanqin Tian, Xiaoming Xu, Yuanzhi Yao, Yi Xi, Wenxin Zhang, Qing Zhu, Qiuan Zhu, and Qianlai Zhuang
Biogeosciences, 22, 305–321, https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-22-305-2025, https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-22-305-2025, 2025
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This study assesses global methane emissions from wetlands between 2000 and 2020 using multiple models. We found that wetland emissions increased by 6–7 Tg CH4 yr-1 in the 2010s compared to the 2000s. Rising temperatures primarily drove this increase, while changes in precipitation and CO2 levels also played roles. Our findings highlight the importance of wetlands in the global methane budget and the need for continuous monitoring to understand their impact on climate change.
Misa Ishizawa, Douglas Chan, Doug Worthy, Elton Chan, Felix Vogel, Joe R. Melton, and Vivek K. Arora
Atmos. Chem. Phys., 24, 10013–10038, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-24-10013-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-24-10013-2024, 2024
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Methane (CH4) emissions in Canada for 2007–2017 were estimated using Canada’s surface greenhouse gas measurements. The estimated emissions show no significant trend, but emission uncertainty was reduced as more measurement sites became available. Notably for climate change, we find the wetland CH4 emissions show a positive correlation with surface air temperature in summer. Canada’s measurement network could monitor future CH4 emission changes and compliance with climate change mitigation goals.
Roberto Bilbao, Pablo Ortega, Didier Swingedouw, Leon Hermanson, Panos Athanasiadis, Rosie Eade, Marion Devilliers, Francisco Doblas-Reyes, Nick Dunstone, An-Chi Ho, William Merryfield, Juliette Mignot, Dario Nicolì, Margarida Samsó, Reinel Sospedra-Alfonso, Xian Wu, and Stephen Yeager
Earth Syst. Dynam., 15, 501–525, https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-15-501-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-15-501-2024, 2024
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In recent decades three major volcanic eruptions have occurred: Mount Agung in 1963, El Chichón in 1982 and Mount Pinatubo in 1991. In this article we explore the climatic impacts of these volcanic eruptions with a purposefully designed set of simulations from six CMIP6 decadal prediction systems. We analyse the radiative and dynamical responses and show that including the volcanic forcing in these predictions is important to reproduce the observed surface temperature variations.
Salvatore R. Curasi, Joe R. Melton, Elyn R. Humphreys, Txomin Hermosilla, and Michael A. Wulder
Geosci. Model Dev., 17, 2683–2704, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-17-2683-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-17-2683-2024, 2024
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Canadian forests are responding to fire, harvest, and climate change. Models need to quantify these processes and their carbon and energy cycling impacts. We develop a scheme that, based on satellite records, represents fire, harvest, and the sparsely vegetated areas that these processes generate. We evaluate model performance and demonstrate the impacts of disturbance on carbon and energy cycling. This work has implications for land surface modeling and assessing Canada’s terrestrial C cycle.
Bo Qu, Alexandre Roy, Joe R. Melton, Jennifer L. Baltzer, Youngryel Ryu, Matteo Detto, and Oliver Sonnentag
EGUsphere, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2023-1167, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2023-1167, 2023
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Accurately simulating photosynthesis and evapotranspiration challenges terrestrial biosphere models across North America’s boreal biome, in part due to uncertain representation of the maximum rate of photosynthetic carboxylation (Vcmax). This study used forest stand scale observations in an optimization framework to improve Vcmax values for representative vegetation types. Several stand characteristics well explained spatial Vcmax variability and were useful to improve boreal forest modelling.
Joe R. Melton, Ed Chan, Koreen Millard, Matthew Fortier, R. Scott Winton, Javier M. Martín-López, Hinsby Cadillo-Quiroz, Darren Kidd, and Louis V. Verchot
Geosci. Model Dev., 15, 4709–4738, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-15-4709-2022, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-15-4709-2022, 2022
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Peat-ML is a high-resolution global peatland extent map generated using machine learning techniques. Peatlands are important in the global carbon and water cycles, but their extent is poorly known. We generated Peat-ML using drivers of peatland formation including climate, soil, geomorphology, and vegetation data, and we train the model with regional peatland maps. Our accuracy estimation approaches suggest Peat-ML is of similar or higher quality than other available peatland mapping products.
Pierre Friedlingstein, Matthew W. Jones, Michael O'Sullivan, Robbie M. Andrew, Dorothee C. E. Bakker, Judith Hauck, Corinne Le Quéré, Glen P. Peters, Wouter Peters, Julia Pongratz, Stephen Sitch, Josep G. Canadell, Philippe Ciais, Rob B. Jackson, Simone R. Alin, Peter Anthoni, Nicholas R. Bates, Meike Becker, Nicolas Bellouin, Laurent Bopp, Thi Tuyet Trang Chau, Frédéric Chevallier, Louise P. Chini, Margot Cronin, Kim I. Currie, Bertrand Decharme, Laique M. Djeutchouang, Xinyu Dou, Wiley Evans, Richard A. Feely, Liang Feng, Thomas Gasser, Dennis Gilfillan, Thanos Gkritzalis, Giacomo Grassi, Luke Gregor, Nicolas Gruber, Özgür Gürses, Ian Harris, Richard A. Houghton, George C. Hurtt, Yosuke Iida, Tatiana Ilyina, Ingrid T. Luijkx, Atul Jain, Steve D. Jones, Etsushi Kato, Daniel Kennedy, Kees Klein Goldewijk, Jürgen Knauer, Jan Ivar Korsbakken, Arne Körtzinger, Peter Landschützer, Siv K. Lauvset, Nathalie Lefèvre, Sebastian Lienert, Junjie Liu, Gregg Marland, Patrick C. McGuire, Joe R. Melton, David R. Munro, Julia E. M. S. Nabel, Shin-Ichiro Nakaoka, Yosuke Niwa, Tsuneo Ono, Denis Pierrot, Benjamin Poulter, Gregor Rehder, Laure Resplandy, Eddy Robertson, Christian Rödenbeck, Thais M. Rosan, Jörg Schwinger, Clemens Schwingshackl, Roland Séférian, Adrienne J. Sutton, Colm Sweeney, Toste Tanhua, Pieter P. Tans, Hanqin Tian, Bronte Tilbrook, Francesco Tubiello, Guido R. van der Werf, Nicolas Vuichard, Chisato Wada, Rik Wanninkhof, Andrew J. Watson, David Willis, Andrew J. Wiltshire, Wenping Yuan, Chao Yue, Xu Yue, Sönke Zaehle, and Jiye Zeng
Earth Syst. Sci. Data, 14, 1917–2005, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-14-1917-2022, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-14-1917-2022, 2022
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The Global Carbon Budget 2021 describes the data sets and methodology used to quantify the emissions of carbon dioxide and their partitioning among the atmosphere, land, and ocean. These living data are updated every year to provide the highest transparency and traceability in the reporting of CO2, the key driver of climate change.
Reinel Sospedra-Alfonso, William J. Merryfield, George J. Boer, Viatsheslav V. Kharin, Woo-Sung Lee, Christian Seiler, and James R. Christian
Geosci. Model Dev., 14, 6863–6891, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-14-6863-2021, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-14-6863-2021, 2021
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CanESM5 decadal predictions that started from observed climate states represent the observed evolution of upper-ocean temperatures, surface climate, and the carbon cycle better than ones not started from observed climate states for several years into the forecast. This is due both to better representations of climate internal variability and to corrections of the model response to external forcing including changes in GHG emissions and aerosols.
Lina Teckentrup, Martin G. De Kauwe, Andrew J. Pitman, Daniel S. Goll, Vanessa Haverd, Atul K. Jain, Emilie Joetzjer, Etsushi Kato, Sebastian Lienert, Danica Lombardozzi, Patrick C. McGuire, Joe R. Melton, Julia E. M. S. Nabel, Julia Pongratz, Stephen Sitch, Anthony P. Walker, and Sönke Zaehle
Biogeosciences, 18, 5639–5668, https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-18-5639-2021, https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-18-5639-2021, 2021
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The Australian continent is included in global assessments of the carbon cycle such as the global carbon budget, yet the performance of dynamic global vegetation models (DGVMs) over Australia has rarely been evaluated. We assessed simulations by an ensemble of dynamic global vegetation models over Australia and highlighted a number of key areas that lead to model divergence on both short (inter-annual) and long (decadal) timescales.
Claude-Michel Nzotungicimpaye, Kirsten Zickfeld, Andrew H. MacDougall, Joe R. Melton, Claire C. Treat, Michael Eby, and Lance F. W. Lesack
Geosci. Model Dev., 14, 6215–6240, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-14-6215-2021, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-14-6215-2021, 2021
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In this paper, we describe a new wetland methane model (WETMETH) developed for use in Earth system models. WETMETH consists of simple formulations to represent methane production and oxidation in wetlands. We also present an evaluation of the model performance as embedded in the University of Victoria Earth System Climate Model (UVic ESCM). WETMETH is capable of reproducing mean annual methane emissions consistent with present-day estimates from the regional to the global scale.
Gesa Meyer, Elyn R. Humphreys, Joe R. Melton, Alex J. Cannon, and Peter M. Lafleur
Biogeosciences, 18, 3263–3283, https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-18-3263-2021, https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-18-3263-2021, 2021
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Shrub and sedge plant functional types (PFTs) were incorporated in the land surface component of the Canadian Earth System Model to improve representation of Arctic tundra ecosystems. Evaluated against 14 years of non-winter measurements, the magnitude and seasonality of carbon dioxide and energy fluxes at a Canadian dwarf-shrub tundra site were better captured by the shrub PFTs than by previously used grass and tree PFTs. Model simulations showed the tundra site to be an annual net CO2 source.
Wolfgang A. Obermeier, Julia E. M. S. Nabel, Tammas Loughran, Kerstin Hartung, Ana Bastos, Felix Havermann, Peter Anthoni, Almut Arneth, Daniel S. Goll, Sebastian Lienert, Danica Lombardozzi, Sebastiaan Luyssaert, Patrick C. McGuire, Joe R. Melton, Benjamin Poulter, Stephen Sitch, Michael O. Sullivan, Hanqin Tian, Anthony P. Walker, Andrew J. Wiltshire, Soenke Zaehle, and Julia Pongratz
Earth Syst. Dynam., 12, 635–670, https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-12-635-2021, https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-12-635-2021, 2021
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We provide the first spatio-temporally explicit comparison of different model-derived fluxes from land use and land cover changes (fLULCCs) by using the TRENDY v8 dynamic global vegetation models used in the 2019 global carbon budget. We find huge regional fLULCC differences resulting from environmental assumptions, simulated periods, and the timing of land use and land cover changes, and we argue for a method consistent across time and space and for carefully choosing the accounting period.
Zichong Chen, Junjie Liu, Daven K. Henze, Deborah N. Huntzinger, Kelley C. Wells, Stephen Sitch, Pierre Friedlingstein, Emilie Joetzjer, Vladislav Bastrikov, Daniel S. Goll, Vanessa Haverd, Atul K. Jain, Etsushi Kato, Sebastian Lienert, Danica L. Lombardozzi, Patrick C. McGuire, Joe R. Melton, Julia E. M. S. Nabel, Benjamin Poulter, Hanqin Tian, Andrew J. Wiltshire, Sönke Zaehle, and Scot M. Miller
Atmos. Chem. Phys., 21, 6663–6680, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-21-6663-2021, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-21-6663-2021, 2021
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NASA's Orbiting Carbon Observatory 2 (OCO-2) satellite observes atmospheric CO2 globally. We use a multiple regression and inverse model to quantify the relationships between OCO-2 and environmental drivers within individual years for 2015–2018 and within seven global biomes. Our results point to limitations of current space-based observations for inferring environmental relationships but also indicate the potential to inform key relationships that are very uncertain in process-based models.
Christian Seiler, Joe R. Melton, Vivek K. Arora, and Libo Wang
Geosci. Model Dev., 14, 2371–2417, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-14-2371-2021, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-14-2371-2021, 2021
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This study evaluates how well the CLASSIC land surface model reproduces the energy, water, and carbon cycle when compared against a wide range of global observations. Special attention is paid to how uncertainties in the data used to drive and evaluate the model affect model skill. Our results show the importance of incorporating uncertainties when evaluating land surface models and that failing to do so may potentially misguide future model development.
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Short summary
Climate models have large grid cells due to the computational cost of running these complex models. Within grid cells like these, the land surface can vary dramatically impacting the exchange of water, carbon, and energy between the atmosphere and land. We use a technique to determine natural clusters of high-resolution soil texture within large grid cells and use them as inputs to our model. We find relatively low sensitivity to soil texture changes except in very dry regions and peatlands.
Climate models have large grid cells due to the computational cost of running these complex...
