INVITED The International Land Model Benchmarking Project (ILAMB)

The need to reduce the range of uncertainty in climate predictions has motivated a growing number of site, regional, and global model-data intercomparison projects that employ terrestrial hydrology and biosphere models, including the Carbon-Land Model Intercomparison Project (C-LAMP), the North American Carbon Program (NACP) interim synthesis projects, the Large Biosphere-Atmosphere Data-Model Intercomparison Project (LBA-DMIP), and the Multi-scale Synthesis and Intercomparison Project (MsTMIP). Such activities are difficult to carry out and time intensive. There is a large cost in developing the infrastructure to make meaningful model-data comparisons, even when the data are freely and easily available. Moreover, the development of sophisticated model diagnostics packages that can exploit the richness of Earth System data sets, from satellite to in situ measurements, are typically outside the scope of any single modeling center. To leverage the efforts of current model-data intercomparison projects and support continued model improvements employing a rapidly increasing body of observational data, a unified model evaluation system that implements a set of internationally agreed-upon model benchmarks is required. The International Land Model Benchmarking (ILAMB) Project was established to develop such benchmarks for land model performance; promote the use of these benchmarks for model-data intercomparison; strengthen linkages between experimental, remote sensing, and climate modeling communities; and support the design and development of a new, open source, benchmarking software system for use by the international community. This presentation will provide updates on ILAMB activities, including descriptions of hydrology, energy, and carbon cycle metrics and data sets for benchmarks, results from recent benchmarking of CMIP5 model results, and the design and development of diagnostics software for community use.