Email: R.Braghiere@pgr.reading.ac.uk

Twitter: @renatobraghiere

The partitioning of shortwave radiation by vegetation into absorbed, reflected, and transmitted terms is important for most biogeophysical processes including photosynthesis. The most commonly used radiative transfer scheme in climate models does not explicitly account for vegetation architectural effects on shortwave radiation partitioning, and even though detailed 3D radiative transfer schemes have been developed, they are often too computationally expensive and require a large number of parameters.

Using a simple parameterisation, we modified a 1D radiative transfer scheme to simulate the radiative balance consistently with 3D representations. Canopy structure is typically treated via a so called “clumping” factor which acts to reduce the effective leaf area index (LAI) and hence fAPAR (fraction of absorbed photosynthetically radiation, 400-700 nm). Consequently from a production efficiency standpoint it seems intuitive that any consideration of clumping can only lead to reduce GPP (Gross Primary Productivity).  We show, to the contrary, that the dominant effect of clumping in more complex models should be to increase photosynthesis on global scales.

The Joint UK Land Environment Simulator (JULES) has recently been modified to include clumping information on a per-plant functional type (PFT) basis (Williams et al., 2017). Here we further modify JULES to read in clumping for each PFT in each grid cell independently. We used a global clumping map derived from MODIS data (He et al., 2012) and ran JULES 4.6 for the year 2008 both with and without clumping using the GL4.0 configuration forced with the WATCH-Forcing-Data-ERA-Interim data set (Weedon et al., 2014). We compare our results against the MTE (Model Tree Ensemble) GPP global data set (Beer et al., 2010).

Fig. 1 shows an almost ubiquitous increase in GPP globally when clumping is included in JULES. In general this improves agreement against the MTE data set (Fig. 2). Spatially the only significant areas where the performance is degraded are some tropical grasslands and savannas (not shown). This is likely due to other model problems, in particular the limited number of PFTs used to represent all vegetation globally. The explanation for the increase in GPP and its spatial pattern is shown in Fig 3. JULES uses a multi-layered canopy scheme coupled to the Farquhar photosynthesis scheme (Farquhar et al., 1980). Changing fAPAR (by including clumping in this case) has largest impacts where GPP is light limited, and this is especially true in tropical forests.

 

References

Beer, C. et al. 2010. Terrestrial gross carbon dioxide uptake: global distribution and covariation with climate. Science, 329(5993), pp.834-838.

Farquhar, G.D. et al. 1980. A biochemical model of photosynthetic CO₂ assimilation in leaves of C3 species. Planta, 149, 78–90.

He, L. et al. 2012. Global clumping index map derived from the MODIS BRDF product. Remote Sensing of Environment, 119, pp.118-130.

Weedon, G. P. et al. 2014. The WFDEI meteorological forcing data set: WATCH Forcing Data methodology applied to ERA-Interim reanalysis data, Water Resour. Res., 50, 7505–7514.

Williams, K. et al. 2017. Evaluation of JULES-crop performance against site observations of irrigated maize from Mead, Nebraska. Geoscientific Model Development, 10(3), pp.1291-1320.