Implementing a new rubber plant functional type in the Community Land Model (CLM5) improves accuracy of carbon and water flux estimation

Rubber plantations are an economically viable land-use type that occupies large swathes of land in Southeast Asia that have undergone conversion from native forest to intensive plantation forestry. Such land-use change has a strong impact on carbon, energy, and water fluxes in ecosystems, and uncertainties exist in the modeling of future land-use change impacts on these fluxes due to the scarcity of measured data and poor representation of key biogeochemical processes. In this current modeling effort, we utilized the Community Land Model Version 5 (CLM5) to simulate a rubber plant functional type (PFT) by comparing the baseline parameter values of tropical evergreen PFT and tropical deciduous PFT with a newly developed rubber PFT (focused on the parameterization and modification of phenology and allocation processes) based on site-level observations of a rubber clone in Indonesia. We found that the baseline tropical evergreen and baseline tropical deciduous functions and parameterizations in CLM5 poorly simulate the leaf area index, carbon dynamics, and water fluxes of rubber plantations. The newly developed rubber PFT and parametrizations (CLM-rubber) showed that daylength could be used as a universal trigger for defoliation and refoliation of rubber plantations. CLM-rubber was able to predict seasonal patterns of latex yield reasonably well, despite highly variable tapping periods across Southeast Asia. Further, model comparisons indicated that CLM-rubber can simulate carbon and energy fluxes similar to the existing rubber model simulations available in the literature. Our modeling results indicate that CLM-rubber can be applied in Southeast Asia to examine variations in carbon and water fluxes for rubber plantations and assess how rubber-related land-use changes in the tropics feedback to climate through carbon and water cycling

Independent Quality Assessment of Essential Climate Variables: Lessons Learned from the Copernicus Climate Change Service

If climate services are to lead to effective use of climate information in decision-making to enable the transition to a climate-smart, climate-ready world, then the question of trust in the products and services is of paramount importance. The Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) has been actively grappling with how to build such trust: provision of demonstrably independent assessments of the quality of products, which was deemed an important element in such trust-building processes. C3S provides access to essential climate variables (ECVs) from multiple sources to a broad set of users ranging from scientists to private companies and decision-makers. Here we outline the approach ­undertaken to coherently assess the quality of a suite of observation- and reanalysis-based ECV products covering the atmosphere, ocean, land, and cryosphere. The assessment is based on four pillars: basic data checks, maturity of the datasets, fitness for purpose (scientific use cases and climate studies), and guidance to users. It is undertaken independently by scientific experts and presented alongside the datasets in a fully traceable, replicable, and transparent manner. The methodology deployed is detailed, and example assessments are given. These independent scientific quality assessments are intended to guide users to ensure they use tools and datasets that are fit for purpose to answer their specific needs rather than simply use the first product they alight on. This is the first such effort to develop and apply an assessment framework consistently to all ECVs. Lessons learned and future perspectives are outlined to potentially improve future assessment activities and thus climate services.This work is funded by European Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) implemented by European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) under the service contract Independent Assessment on ECVs led by the National Research Council of Italy (CNR) with the service contract number as ECMWF/Copernicus/2017/C3S_511_CNR.Peer reviewe

Firefly: The Case for a Holistic Understanding of the Global Structure and Dynamics of the Sun and the Heliosphere

This white paper is on the HMCS Firefly mission concept study. Firefly focuses on the global structure and dynamics of the Sun's interior, the generation of solar magnetic fields, the deciphering of the solar cycle, the conditions leading to the explosive activity, and the structure and dynamics of the corona as it drives the heliosphere