Evaluating and improving the Community Land Model's sensitivity to land cover

Meier, Ronny; Davin, Edouard L.; Lejeune, Quentin; Hauser, Mathias; Li, Yan; Martens, Brecht; Schultz, Natalie M.; Sterling, Shannon; Thiery, Wim

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-15-4731-2018

Articles | Volume 15, issue 15

https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-15-4731-2018

© Author(s) 2018. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-15-4731-2018

© Author(s) 2018. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 15, issue 15

Research article

|

08 Aug 2018

Research article |

| 08 Aug 2018

Evaluating and improving the Community Land Model's sensitivity to land cover

Ronny Meier, Edouard L. Davin, Quentin Lejeune, Mathias Hauser, Yan Li, Brecht Martens, Natalie M. Schultz, Shannon Sterling, and Wim Thiery

Data sets

Dalhousie Hydrology Research Group S. Sterling http://sterlinglab.ca

CESM1.2 Release Series User's Guide CESM Software Engineering Group (NCAR) http://www.cesm.ucar.edu/models/cesm1.2/cesm/doc/usersguide/book1.html

Short summary

Deforestation not only releases carbon dioxide to the atmosphere but also affects local climatic conditions by altering energy fluxes at the land surface and thereby the local temperature. Here, we evaluate the local impact of deforestation in a widely used land surface model. We find that the model reproduces the daytime warming effect of deforestation well. On the other hand, the warmer temperatures observed during night in forests are not present in this model.