6.1 The LandFlux-EVAL Initiative [INVITED]

Tuesday, 25 January 2011: 3:30 PM
611 (Washington State Convention Center)
Sonia I. Seneviratne, ETH, Zurich, Switzerland; and C. Jimenez, B. Mueller, C. Kummerow, M. McCabe, W. B. Rossow, G. Balsamo, P. Ciais, P. A. Dirmeyer, J. B. Fisher, R. H. Reichle, M. Reichstein, M. Rodell, K. Wang, and E. F. Wood

Land evapotranspiration (ET) is an essential component of the climate system, but has been long linked with uncertainties in most regions of the world due to a lack of reference global observations. This has important consequences for climate research and hydrology: Land ET constitutes one of the missing terms of the global water cycle, and land-atmosphere exchanges have been shown to strongly impact climate-change projections, in particular with regard to changes in climate variability and extreme events. Several recently developed datasets based in part on observations, now provide global ET estimates: dedicated satellite-derived products, observation-driven land surface model simulations, reanalysis data products, and datasets based on atmospheric water balance estimates.

The LandFlux-EVAL initiative (http://www.iac.ethz.ch/url/research/LandFlux-EVAL), which is part of the LandFlux activity spearheaded by the GEWEX radiation panel, aims at evaluating and inter-comparing these newly available ET datasets. In this presentation, the rationale for the LandFlux-EVAL initiative will be highlighted, together with fi rst results from on-going investigations and their implications. In particular we will provide estimations of biases and uncertainties in current land ET estimates, and corresponding evaluations of IPCC AR4 simulations.

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