Terrestrial biosphere models can help identify physical processes that control carbon
dynamics, including land–atmosphere CO₂ fluxes, and have great potential to predict the terrestrial
ecosystem response to changing climate. The skill of models that provide continental-scale carbon flux
estimates, however, remains largely untested. This paper evaluates the performance of continental-scale...
Fossil fuel emissions aside, temperate North America is a net sink of carbon dioxide at present¹⁻³. Year-to-year variations in this carbon sink are linked to variations in hydroclimate that affect net ecosystem productivity³,⁴. The severity and incidence of climatic extremes, including drought, have increased as a result of climate warming⁵⁻⁸....
Accurately simulating gross primary productivity (GPP) in terrestrial ecosystem models is critical because errors in simulated GPP propagate through the model to introduce additional errors in simulated biomass and other fluxes. We evaluated simulated, daily average GPP from 26 models against estimated GPP at 39 eddy covariance flux tower sites...