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Cited by 296

The DOI matches its Crossref record; 33 of the 33 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.

The Plumbing of Land Surface Models: Benchmarking Model Performance

Open access
Best, M. J., Abramowitz, G., Johnson, H. R., Pitman, A. J., Balsamo, G., Boone, A., Cuntz, M., Decharme, B., Dirmeyer, P. A., Dong, J., Ek, M., Guo, Z., Haverd, V., van den Hurk, B. J. J., Nearing, G. S., Pak, B., Peters-Lidard, C., Santanello, J. A., Stevens, L., Vuichard, N.·2015·Journal of Hydrometeorology

Abstract

The Protocol for the Analysis of Land Surface Models (PALS) Land Surface Model Benchmarking Evaluation Project (PLUMBER) was designed to be a land surface model (LSM) benchmarking intercomparison. Unlike the traditional methods of LSM evaluation or comparison, benchmarking uses a fundamentally different approach in that it sets expectations of performance in a range of metrics a priori—before model simulations are performed. This can lead to very different conclusions about LSM performance. For this study, both simple physically based models and empirical relationships were used as the benchmarks. Simulations were performed with 13 LSMs using atmospheric forcing for 20 sites, and then model performance relative to these benchmarks was examined. Results show that even for commonly used statistical metrics, the LSMs’ performance varies considerably when compared to the different benchmarks. All models outperform the simple physically based benchmarks, but for sensible heat flux the LSMs are themselves outperformed by an out-of-sample linear regression against downward shortwave radiation. While moisture information is clearly central to latent heat flux prediction, the LSMs are still outperformed by a three-variable nonlinear regression that uses instantaneous atmospheric humidity and temperature in addition to downward shortwave radiation. These results highlight the limitations of the prevailing paradigm of LSM evaluation that simply compares an LSM to observations and to other LSMs without a mechanism to objectively quantify the expectations of performance. The authors conclude that their results challenge the conceptual view of energy partitioning at the land surface.

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Metadata

Authors
Best, M. J., Abramowitz, G., Johnson, H. R., Pitman, A. J., Balsamo, G., Boone, A., Cuntz, M., Decharme, B., Dirmeyer, P. A., Dong, J., Ek, M., Guo, Z., Haverd, V., van den Hurk, B. J. J., Nearing, G. S., Pak, B., Peters-Lidard, C., Santanello, J. A., Stevens, L., & Vuichard, N.
Venue
Journal of Hydrometeorology
Published
2015-06
Volume
16
Issue
3
Pages
1425-1442
ISSN
  • 1525-7541 (ISSN-L)
  • 1525-755X
OpenAlex
W1980854310
Cited by
296
References
33
FWCI
17.72
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
green

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Best, M. J., Abramowitz, G., Johnson, H. R., Pitman, A. J., Balsamo, G., Boone, A., Cuntz, M., Decharme, B., Dirmeyer, P. A., Dong, J., Ek, M., Guo, Z., Haverd, V., van den Hurk, B. J. J., Nearing, G. S., Pak, B., Peters-Lidard, C., Santanello, J. A., Stevens, L., & Vuichard, N. (2015). The Plumbing of Land Surface Models: Benchmarking Model Performance. Journal of Hydrometeorology. https://doi.org/10.1175/jhm-d-14-0158.1

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