Evaluation of CMIP6 Global Climate Models for Simulating Land Surface Energy and Water Fluxes During 1979–2014

Abstract This study examined the overall performance of the climate models in Phase 6 of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP6) in simulating the key energy and water fluxes over land. For this purpose, this study selected multiple land flux products as reference data sets and assessed th...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of Advances in Modeling Earth Systems
Main Authors: Jianduo Li, Chiyuan Miao, Wei Wei, Guo Zhang, Lijuan Hua, Yueli Chen, Xiaoxiao Wang
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:English
Published: American Geophysical Union (AGU) 2021
Subjects:
land surface model
CMIP6
water flux
energy flux
model evaluation
Physical geography
GB3-5030
Oceanography
GC1-1581
Greenland
Antarc*
Antarctica
Online Access:https://doi.org/10.1029/2021MS002515
https://doaj.org/article/7857a87783494c7d8192afd2a64835d3
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Summary:Abstract This study examined the overall performance of the climate models in Phase 6 of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP6) in simulating the key energy and water fluxes over land. For this purpose, this study selected multiple land flux products as reference data sets and assessed the global spatial means, patterns, trends, seasonal cycles, and regional mean estimates of the sensible heat (SH), latent heat (LH), net radiation (RN), runoff (RF), and precipitation (PR) simulated by 32 CMIP6 models in recent decades. The global (Antarctica, Greenland, and hot deserts are not included) mean SH, LH, RN, RF, and PR simulated by the CMIP6 models are 37.55 ± 4.81 W m−2, 49.88 ± 5.31 W m−2, 89.10 ± 4.45 W m−2, 351.31 ± 95.28 mm yr−1, and 948.35 ± 88.77 mm yr−1, respectively. The ensemble median of CMIP6 simulations (CMIP6‐MED) can provide robust estimates of global and regional land fluxes, which are within the ranges given by the reference data sets, and highly consistent spatiotemporal patterns of these fluxes. The comparison of CMIP6‐MED with the first preferred reference data sets shows that CMIP6‐MED generally overestimates the water and energy fluxes over land, except for the simulated RF and PR in the Amazon region. The most disagreements between CMIP6‐MED and the reference data sets occur in South America (particularly the Amazon region) and the Tibetan Plateau. Finally, the sources of model biases are discussed. It is suggested that current land flux products should be widely used to optimize the structures and parameters of climate models in future work.

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