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Carbon and water cycle dynamics of vegetation are controlled primarily by photosynthesis and stomatal conductance (gs). Our goal is to improve the representation of these key physiological processes within the JULES land surface model, with a particular focus on refining the temperature sensitivity of photosynthesis, impacting modelled carbon, energy and water fluxes. We test (1) an implementation of the Farquhar et al. (1980) photosynthesis scheme and associated plant functional type-dependent photosynthetic temperature response functions, (2) the optimality-based gs scheme from Medlyn et al. (2011) and (3) the Kattge and Knorr (2007) photosynthetic capacity thermal acclimation scheme. New parameters for each model configuration are adopted from recent large observational datasets that synthesise global experimental data. These developments to JULES incorporate current physiological understanding of vegetation behaviour into the model and enable users to derive direct links between model parameters and ongoing measurement campaigns that refine such parameter values. Replacement of the original Collatz et al. (1991) C3 photosynthesis model with the Farquhar scheme results in large changes in GPP for the current day, with ∼ 10 % reduction in seasonal (June–August, JJA, and December–February, DJF) mean GPP in tropical forests and ∼ 20 % increase in the northern high-latitude forests in JJA. The optimality-based gs model decreases the latent heat flux for the present day (∼ 10 %, with an associated increase in sensible heat flux) across regions dominated by needleleaf evergreen forest in the Northern Hemisphere summer. Thermal acclimation of photosynthesis coupled with the Medlyn gs scheme reduced tropical forest GPP by up to 5 % and increased GPP in the high-northern-latitude forests by between 2 % and 5 %. Evaluation of simulated carbon and water fluxes by each model configuration against global data products shows this latter configuration generates improvements in these key areas. Thermal acclimation of photosynthesis coupled with the Medlyn gs scheme improved modelled carbon fluxes in tropical and high-northern-latitude forests in JJA and improved the simulation of evapotranspiration across much of the Northern Hemisphere in JJA. Having established good model performance for the contemporary period, we force this new version of JULES offline with a future climate scenario corresponding to rising atmospheric greenhouse gases (Shared Socioeconomic Pathway (SSP5), Representative Concentration Pathway 8.5 (RCP8.5)). In particular, these calculations allow for understanding of the effects of long-term warming. We find that the impact of thermal acclimation coupled with the optimality-based gs model on simulated fluxes increases latent heat flux (+50 %) by the year 2050 compared to the JULES model configuration without acclimation. This new JULES configuration also projects increased GPP across tropical (+10 %) and northern-latitude regions (+30 %) by 2050. We conclude that thermal acclimation of photosynthesis with the Farquhar photosynthesis scheme and the new optimality-based gs scheme together improve the simulation of carbon and water fluxes for the current day and have a large impact on modelled future carbon cycle dynamics in a warming world.

We have updated the soil properties used in JULES (Joint UK Land Environment Simulator), which is the land-surface component of the UM (Unified Model, the UK Met Office’s climate model). JULES models the interaction of the land surface with the atmosphere, and simulates the energy, water, and carbon fluxes. JULES allows either: (i) the Brooks & Corey (BC) model for estimating soil hydraulic properties, or (ii) the van Genuchten (VG) model but using hydraulic parameters translated from the BC model. One advantage of the VG model over the BC model is the smoother dependence of water retention upon matric potential for nearly saturated soils. Herein, we report on our work towards fully implementing the VG model in JULES and in the UM, through the implementation and evaluation of several VG pedotransfer functions (PTFs) for estimating the soil hydraulic parameters used in the hydraulic functions. We have tested three VG PTFs in global offline JULES runs (driven with WFDEI data over 1979-2012): the combination of Tóth et al. PTFs 17 & 20, the Weynants et al. PTF, and the Zhang & Schaap ROSETTA3 H1 PTF (modified for sandy soils). We also modernized the soil basic properties that are conventionally used for JULES and the UM, from the UM version of the Harmonized World Soil Database (HWSD) to the SoilGrids database. Evaluation of JULES simulations shows (i) that the modified version of the Zhang & Schaap ROSETTA3 H1 PTF is the best VG option, and (ii) that it compares favorably with the BC control model (which uses the Cosby et al. PTF and the UM/HWSD soils), in terms of the surface energy balance and the mitigation of near-surface temperature biases over mid-latitude continental regions. This modified version of the Zhang & Schaap ROSETTA3 H1 PTF with SoilGrids soils is also currently being used in coupled land-atmosphere UM runs.

Capturing soil moisture-atmosphere feedbacks in a weather or climate model requires realistic simulation of various land surface processes. However, irrigation and other water management methods are still missing in most global climate models today, despite irrigated agriculture being the dominant land use in parts of Asia. In this study, we test the irrigation scheme available in the land model JULES (Joint UK Land Environment Simulator) by running land-only simulations over South and East Asia driven by WFDEI (WATCH Forcing Data ERA-Interim) forcing data. Irrigation in JULES is applied on a daily basis by replenishing soil moisture in the upper soil layers to field capacity, and we use a version of the irrigation scheme that extracts water for irrigation from groundwater and rivers, which physically limits the amount of irrigation that can be applied. We prescribe irrigation for C3 grasses in order to simulate the effects of agriculture, albeit retaining the simpler, widely used 5-PFT (plant functional type) configuration in JULES. Irrigation generally increases soil moisture and evapotranspiration, which results in increasing latent heat fluxes and decreasing sensible heat fluxes. Comparison with combined observational/machine-learning products for turbulent fluxes shows that while irrigation can reduce biases, other biases in JULES, unrelated to irrigation, are larger than improvements due to the inclusion of irrigation. Irrigation also affects water fluxes within the soil, e.g. runoff and drainage into the groundwater level, as well as soil moisture outside of the irrigation season. We find that the irrigation scheme, at least in the uncoupled land-atmosphere setting, can rapidly deplete groundwater to the point that river flow becomes the main source of irrigation (over the North China Plain and the Indus region) and can have the counterintuitive effect of decreasing annual average soil moisture (over the Ganges plain). Subsequently, we will explore the impact of irrigation on regional climate by conducting coupled land-atmosphere simulations.

Boreal forests cover about a fifth of seasonally snow‐covered land over the Northern Hemisphere. Enhancement of longwave radiation beneath coniferous forests has been found to impact the surface energy balance and rates of snowmelt. Although skill of model‐simulated snowmelt has been shown to be lower for forests than for open areas, model intercomparisons and evaluations of model parameterizations have not yet focussed on longwave enhancement. This study uses stand‐scale forcing for the simulation of sub‐canopy longwave radiation by Community Land Model version 4.5 (CLM4.5) and to drive SNOWPACK, a snow model featuring more complex canopy structure, as a benchmark model for CLM4.5. Simulated sub‐canopy longwave radiation and longwave enhancement are assessed using measurements from forest stands located within perennially snow‐covered regions. These forest stands, of varying canopy density, cover the range of boreal Plant Functional Types (PFTs) in CLM4.5. CLM4.5 is found to overestimate the diurnal range of sub‐canopy longwave radiation and longwave enhancement, and simulation errors increase with decreasing cloudiness and increasing vegetation density. Implementation of a parameterization of heat storage by biomass reduces simulation errors, but only marginally affects the amplitude of diurnal ranges. These results reaffirm previous findings that simulation of sub‐canopy longwave radiation can be improved by partitioning the vegetation canopy into two layers. Moreover, this study reveals the variations of simulation errors across meteorological conditions and vegetation density, the latter of which is the most important parameter for longwave enhancement independent of vegetation type.