Evaluation of JULES-crop performance against site observations of irrigated maize from Mead, Nebraska

Authors

Karina Williams, Met Office Hadley CentreFollow
Jemma Gornall, Met Office Hadley Centre
Anna Harper, University of Exeter
Andy Wiltshire, Met Office Hadley Centre
Debbie Hemming, Met Office Hadley Centre
Tristan Quaife, University of Reading
Tim Arkebauer, University of Nebraska-LincolnFollow
David Scoby, University of Nebraska-LincolnFollow

Document Type

Article

Date of this Version

2017

Citation

Geosci. Model Dev., 10, 1291–1320, 2017

Comments

© Author(s) 2017.

doi:10.5194/gmd-10-1291-2017

Abstract

The JULES-crop model (Osborne et al., 2015) is a parametrisation of crops within the Joint UK Land Environment Simulator (JULES), which aims to simulate both the impact of weather and climate on crop productivity and the impact of croplands on weather and climate. In this evaluation paper, observations of maize at three FLUXNET sites in Nebraska (US-Ne1, US-Ne2 and US-Ne3) are used to test model assumptions and make appropriate input parameter choices. JULES runs are performed for the irrigated sites (US-Ne1 and US-Ne2) both with the crop model switched off (prescribing leaf area index (LAI) and canopy height) and with the crop model switched on. These are compared against GPP and carbon pool FLUXNET observations. We use the results to point to future priorities for model development and describe how our methodology can be adapted to set up model runs for other sites and crop varieties.