Evaluating vegetation albedo for a clumped, multi-level canopy radiative transfer scheme and impacts on simulated primary productivity and GISS GCM climate

Carlo Montes, NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, carlo.montes@nasa.gov (Presenter)
Nancy Y. Kiang, NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, nancy.y.kiang@nasa.gov (Presenter)
Wenze Yang, Geography Department, Hunter College, ywze98@yahoo.com
Wenge Ni-Meister, Hunter College of The City University of New York, wenge.ni-meister@hunter.cuny.edu
Crystal Schaaf, University of Massachusetts Boston, crystal.schaaf@umb.edu
Tian Yao, Boston University, tianyao@bu.edu
Zhuosen Wang, NASA GSFC, zhuosen.wang@nasa.gov
Igor Aleinov, Center for Climate Systems Research, Columbia University
Qingsong Sun, University of Massachusetts
Jeffrey A Jonas, Center for Climate Systems Research, Columbia University
Feng Aron Zhao, University of Maryland, zhao26@umd.edu

A new Analytical Clumped Two-Stream (ACTS) canopy radiative transfer scheme was previously developed for the Ent Terrestrial Biosphere Model (TBM), the Dynamic Global Vegetation Model (DGVM) coupled to the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) General Circulation Model (GCM) and its Land Surface Model (LSM). By accounting for foliage clumping and vegetation heterogeneities, ACTS allows a better representation of canopy radiative transfer with a minimal computational cost, and allows for prognostic calculation of canopy light transmittance and albedo for changing canopy structures. A very good performance was found in previous site-scale assessments, but the on-line evaluation at the global scale is pending. For this, coupled GISS GCM-Ent/ACTS simulations will be carried out and evaluated in terms of simulated vegetation albedo, primary productivity and climate sensitivity to the new canopy radiative transfer. Vertical foliage profile data from the Geoscience Laser Altimeter System (GLAS) on board ICESat (Ice, Cloud, and land Elevation Satellite) will be used to derive multi-cohort mixed canopy structures in patches at the sub-grid level of the GCM. This new global canopy structure dataset will be used to assess model sensitivity for different canopy configurations and improvements provided by ACTS.

Presentation: 2015_Poster_Montes_231_175.pdf (17527k)

Presentation Type:  Poster

Session:  Theme 3: Future research direction and priorities: perspectives relevant to the next decadal survey   (Mon 4:30 PM)

Associated Project(s): 

• Related Activity: Related Activity or Previously Funded CC&E Activity not listed ...details

Poster Location ID: 231