Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Surface energy, water and carbon cycle in China simulated by the Australian community land surface model (CABLE)

  • Original Paper
  • Published:
Theoretical and Applied Climatology Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Through an Australia-China climate change bilateral project, we analyzed results of 51-year global offline simulations over China using the Australian community atmosphere biosphere land exchange (CABLE) model, focusing on integrated studies of its surface energy, water and carbon cycle at seasonal, interannual and longer time-scales. In addition to the similar features in surface climatology between the CABLE simulation and those derived from the global land-surface data assimilation system, comparison of surface fluxes at a CEOP reference site in northeast China also suggested that the seasonal cycles of surface evaporation and CO2 flux are reasonably simulated by the model. We further assessed temporal variations of model soil moisture with the observed variations at a number of locations in China. Observations show a soil moisture recharge–discharge mechanism on a seasonal time scale in central-east China, with soil moisture being recharged during its summer wet season, retained in its winter due to low evaporation demand, and depleted during early spring when the land warms up. Such a seasonal cycle is shown at both 50- and 100-cm soil depths in observations while the model only shows a similar feature in its lower soil layers with its upper layer soil moisture varying tightly with rainfall seasonal cycle. In the analysis of the model carbon cycle, the net primary productivity (NPP) has similar spatial patterns as the ones derived from an ecosystem model with remote sensing. The simulated interannual variations of NPP by CABLE are consistent with the results derived from remote sensing-based and process-based studies over the period of 1981–2000. Nevertheless an upward trend from observations is not presented in the model results. The model shows a downward trend primarily due to the constant CO2 concentration used in the experiment and a large increase of autotrophic respiration caused by an upward trend in surface temperature forcing data. Furthermore, we have compared river discharge data from the model experiments with observations in the Yangtze and Yellow River basins in China. In the Yangtze River basin, while the observed interannual variability is reasonably captured, the model significantly underestimates its river discharge, which is consist with its overestimation of evaporation in the region. In the Yellow River basin, the magnitudes of the river discharge is similar between modeled and observed but its variations are less skillfully captured as seen in the Yangtze River region.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 3
Fig. 4
Fig. 5
Fig. 6
Fig. 7
Fig. 8
Fig. 9
Fig. 10
Fig. 11
Fig. 12
Fig. 13
Fig. 14
Fig. 15
Fig. 16

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  • Bastidas LA, Rosero E, Nijssen B (2006) PILPS semi-arid experiment: preliminary results, Proceedings of the 20th Conference on Hydrology, AMS 2006 Meeting, Atlanta, GA, USA, 29 January–4 February 2006

  • Cao M, Prince SD, Li K, Tao B, Small J, Shao X (2003) Response of terrestrial carbon uptake to climate interannual variability in China. Glob Chang Biol 9:536–546

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Cook RB, Holladay SK, Santhana Vannan SK, Pan JY, Jackson BL, Wilson BE (2007) FLUXNET: data from Global Network of Eddy-Covariance Flux Towers, AGU meeting, San Francisco, CA, 12 December 2007

  • Cox PM, Betts RA, Jones CD, Spall SA, Totterdell IJ (2000) Acceleration of global warming due to carbon-cycle feedbacks in a coupled climate model. Nature 408:184–187

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • de Rosnay P, Polcher J, Laval K, Sabre M (2003) Integrated parameterization of irrigation in the land surface model ORCHIDEE Validation over Indian Peninsula. Geophy Res Lett 30(19) doi:10.1029/2003GL018024

  • Dickinson RE, Shaikh M, Bryant R, Graumlich L (1998) Interactive canopies for a climate model. J Climate 11:2823–2836

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Dirmeyer PA, Dolman AJ, Sato N (1999) The global soil wetness project: a pilot project for global land surface modeling and validation. Bull Am Meteorol Soc 80:851–878

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Feng X, Liu G, Chen JM, Chen M, Liu J, Ju WM, Sun R, Zhou W (2007) Net primary productivity of China’s terrestrial ecosystems from a process model derived by remote sensing. J Environ Manage 85:563–573

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Koster RD et al (2004) Regions of strong coupling between soil moisture and precipitation. Science 305:1138–1140

    Google Scholar 

  • Kowalczyk E, Wang YP, Law RM, Davies HL, McGregor JL, Abramowitz G (2007) CSIRO atmosphere biosphere land exchange model for use in climate models and as an offline model. CSIRO Marine and Atmospheric technical report, CISRO, Clayton South, Australia

  • Li Y (2007) Observation and studies on arid and semi-arid land-atmosphere interactions in northwest China. BMRC Res Rep 133:53–54

    Google Scholar 

  • Liang X, Wood EF, Lettenmaier DP (1994) A simple hydraulically-based model of land surface and energy fluxes for general circulation models. J Geophys Res 99:14415–14428

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Liu B, Xu M, Henderson M, Gong W (2004) A spatial analysis of pan evaporation trends in China, 1955–2000. J Geophys Res 109, D15102 doi:10.1029/2004JD004511

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Montaldo N, Albertson JD (2001) On the use of force-restore SVAT model formulation for stratified soils. J Hydrometeorol 2:571–578

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ngo-Duc T, Polcher J, Laval K (2005) A 53-year forcing data set for land surface models. J Geophys Res 110, D06116 doi:10.1029/2004JD005434

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Oki T, Nishimura T, Dirmeyer P (1999) Assessment of annual runoff from land surface models using total runoff integrating pathway (TRIP). J Meteorol Soc Japan 77:235–255

    Google Scholar 

  • Oleson KW et al (2004) Technical description of the community land model (CLM). NCAR Tech. Note NCAR/TN-461_STR, NCAR, Boulder, CO, 173 pp

  • Potter CS, Randerson JT, Field CB, Matson PA, Vitousek PM, Mooney HA, Klooster SA (1993) Terrestrial ecosystem production: a process model based on global satellite and surface data. Glob Biogeochem Cycl 7:811–841

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Raupach MR (1989) A practical Lagrangian method for relating scalar source concentrations to source distributions in vegetation canopies. Q J Roy Meteorol Soc 115:609–632

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ren L, Wang M, Li C, Zhang W (2002) Impacts of human activity on river runoff in the northern area of China. J Hydrol 261:204–217

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Robock A, Vinnikov KY, Srinivasan G, Entin JK, Hollinger SE, Speranskaya NA, Liu S, Namkhai A (2000) The global soil moisture data bank. Bull Am Meteorol Soc 81:1281–1299

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Rodell M, Houser PR, Jambor U, Gottschalck J, Mitchell K, Meng C, Arsenault K, Cosgrove B, Radakovich J, Bosilovich M, Entin JK, Walker JP, Lohmann D, Toll D (2004) The global land data assimilation system. Bull Am Meteorol Soc 3:381–394

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Sellers PJ, Mintz Y, Sud YC, Dalcher A (1986) A simple biosphere model (SiB) for use with general circulation models. J Atmos Sci 43:505–531

    Google Scholar 

  • Seneviratne SI, Lüthi D, Litschi M, Schär C (2006) Land-atmosphere coupling and climate change in Europe. Nature 443:205–209

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Tang Q, Oki T, Kanae S, Hu H (2007) The influence of precipitation variability and partial irrigation within grid cells on a hydrological simulation. J Hydrometeorol 8:499–512

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Walko RL et al (2000) Coupled atmosphere-biophysics-hydrology models for environmental modeling. J Appl Meteorol 39:931–944

    Google Scholar 

  • Wang Y, Leuning R (1998) A two-leaf model for canopy conductance, photosynthesis and partitioning of available energy I: model description and comparison with a multi-layer model. Agric For Meteorol 91:89–111

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Wang YP, McGregor JL (2003) Estimating regional terrestrial carbon fluxes for the Australian continent using a multiple-constraint approach. II. The atmospheric constraint. Tellus 55B:290–304

    Google Scholar 

  • Wang Y, Abramowitz G, Kowalczyk E, Law R, Pak B, Smith A, Zhang H (2007) Evaluating the Australian community land surface model for Australian ecosystem. BMRC Res Rep 133:45–46

    Google Scholar 

  • Xiao X, Melillo JM, Kicklighter DW, Pan Y, McGuire AD, Helfrich J (2006) Net primary production of terrestrial ecosystems in China and its equilibrium responses to changes in climate and atmospheric CO2 concentration. Massachusetts Institute of Technology Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change Report 12, MIT, Cambridge, MA, 36 pp

    Google Scholar 

  • Xu C, Gong L, Jiang T, Chen D, Singh VP (2006) Analysis of spatial distribution and temporal trend of reference evapotranspiration and pan evaporation in Changjiang (Yangtze River) catchment. J Hydrol 327:81–93

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Yang M, Zhu W, Pan Y, Yu D, Long Z (2005) Spatio-temporal distribution of net primary productivity along the northeast China transect and its response to climatic change from 1982 to 2000. IEEE International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium Proceedings, July 2005, Seoul, Korea

  • Zhang H (2004) Analyzing the potential impacts of soil moisture on the observed and model-simulated Australian surface temperature variations. J Clim 17:4190–4212

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Zhang H, Frederiksen CS (2003) Local and non-local impacts of soil moisture initialisation on AGCM seasonal forecasts: a model sensitivity study. J Clim 16:2117–2137

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Zhang H, Zhang L (2007) Energy, water and carbon cycles simulated in a 51-yr CABLE global offline experiment: towards an integrated modelling system. BMRC Res Rep 133:67–70

    Google Scholar 

  • Zhang XS, Gao Q, Yang D (1997) A gradient analysis and precipitation on the Northeast China Transect for global change study. Acta Bot Sin 39:785–799 (in Chinese)

    Google Scholar 

  • Zhang Q, Xu C, Becker S, Jiang T (2006) Sediment and runoff changes in the Yangtze River basin during the past 50 years. J Hydrol 331:511–523

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Zhang Y, Liu C, Tang Y, Yang Y (2007) Trends in pan evaporation and reference and actual evapotranspiration across the Tibetan Plateau. J Geophys Res 112, D12110 doi:10.1029/2006JD008161

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Zobler L (1986) A world soil file for global climate modeling. National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Technical memorandum 87802, Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), New York, 32 pp

  • Zuo Z, Zhang R (2007) The spring soil moisture and the summer rainfall in eastern China. Chin Sci Bull 52:3310–3312 (in English)

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgements

This study forms part of the activities of an Australia-China climate change bilateral project led by Dr. H Zhang on studying land-use and land-surface processes in the Australia-Asian region. The authors appreciate the efforts form the CABLE development team in its development. Help from G. Abramowitz in setting up the model's re-start facility and coding changes for running at UNIX station is greatly appreciated. L. Hanson from BMRC/CAWCR is thanked for helping processing the data. The visit of L. Zhang is supported by the AGO bilateral project. The authors appreciate the constructive comments from Dr. Y-P Wang and C. Draper during the internal review process and from two anonymous reviewers.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Arid Meteorology, CMA, No.1234 Donggang East Road, Lanzhou, China

    Liang Zhang, Huqiang Zhang & Yaohui Li

  2. Centre for Australian Weather and Climate Research*, GPO Box 1289K, Melbourne, VIC 3001, Australia

    Huqiang Zhang

Authors
  1. Liang Zhang
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Huqiang Zhang
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Yaohui Li
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Huqiang Zhang.

Additional information

*A partnership between the Australian Bureau of Meteorology and CSIRO

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Zhang, L., Zhang, H. & Li, Y. Surface energy, water and carbon cycle in China simulated by the Australian community land surface model (CABLE). Theor Appl Climatol 96, 375–394 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00704-008-0047-z

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00704-008-0047-z

Keywords

Search

Navigation