Final Report Summary - POLICE (Parameter Optimisation of a terrestrial biosphere model to Link processes to Inter annual variability of Carbon fluxes in European forest Ecosystems)
In this context, I assess, using a state of the art data assimilation approach, the impact of extreme climate spells, such as the summer 2003, versus the one of "normal" year-to-year climate variations on the processes which control the European carbon balance. This knowledge will be propagated into better future projections of the European carbon balance.
Overall, the scientific objectives of the project will be primarily investigated using a parameter optimisation approach. Estimation of the process-based ecosystem parameters using radiation, sensible heat, latent heat, and CO2 exchanges at several ecosystem sites (forest) will help to improve the simulation of inter annual variations in terrestrial CO2 fluxes and to assess the potential of the ORCHIDEE model.
The overall objectives of this proposal are threefold: (1) Optimisation of all critical parameters of ORCHIDEE and assessment of the limits of this process-based model to simulate eddy covariance measurements. (2) Identification of drivers and processes determining inter annual variations of forest carbon fluxes. (3) Improved model future projections of Europe's carbon balance, with uncertainty estimates, using the optimized parameters. As the POLICE project was only active for 6 months, only the first objective was achieved.