Results from the LBA Data-Model Intercomparison Project

AMAZALERT - Results from the LBA-Data-Model Intercomparison project (LBA-DMIP)

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About AMAZALERT AMAZALERT examines how global and regional climate and land-use changes will impact Amazonian forests, agriculture, waters, and people; and how these impacts feed back onto climate. Espagnol | Português

Results from the LBA-Data-Model Intercomparison project (LBA-DMIP) The LBA Data-Model Intercomparison project (de Gonçalves et al., in press) has played a major role in synthesis of science about the Brazilian Amazon, supporting the organization of a database of eddy covariance fluxes across Brazilian Amazônia against which models of ecosystem function can be now assessed, calibrated and improved. A core set of six publications from the LBA-DMIP is being published in a special section of Agricultural and Forest Meterorology, and an additional series of publications published elsewhere or pending are expected soon. These studies focused on, e.g., interannual variability of carbon and water fluxes (von Randow et al., in review) or seasonality of evapotranspiration (ET). Main results achieved in the project were present in a meeting held last April in Fort Collins, CO: considerable improvement in model representation of seasonal cycles of ET, particularly at the equatorial forest sites where discrepancies had long been widely noted (figure). However, modeling the seasonal cycles of ET in the drier southern transitional forests remains poor, and improving model performance in equatorial forests at times has come at the cost of accurate representation of dry season water limitation in drier cerrado.

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AMAZALERT - Results from the LBA-Data-Model Intercomparison project (LBA-DMIP)

How well do models capture the observed seasonality of ET in Amazonia? Modeled (colored lines) and observed (points & error bars) average seasonal cycle of ET (gray shaded region denotes dry season) show that most models now capture the observed seasonality of ET at equatorial forests and cerrado, where seasonality is largely radiation- and moisture-limited, respectively, but overestimate dry season water limitation in drier transitional forests along the southern margin of the basin. AMAZALERT Secretary, Wednesday 3 July 2013

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