Regional and Global Modeling to be Improved by Data Assimilation

Ecosystem and biogeochemical cycling models have been incorporated into earth system models to project terrestrial carbon sinks and sources and their feedback to climate change in the 21st century. Those model predictions have been incorporated into the assessment reports of the Intergovernment Panel for Climate Change (IPCC) to guide mitigation efforts by governments and public. Most ecosystem models make limited use of observations for parameterization, verification, and validation. With the advent of large measurement networks, such as global change experiments, Fluxnet, LTER, and satellites over the past decades, experimental and observational data are increasingly abundant. We are developing and applying data assimilation techniques to fuse the diverse and abundant data into models so as to improve prediction of terrestrial carbon sequestration at regional and continental scales and explicitly acknowledge sources of uncertainty.