GEOLAND I&II

The EU-funded GEOLAND and GEOLAND2 projects were carried out in the context of GMES/GIO/Copernicus as precursors of the Copernicus Global Land Monitoring Service.

GEOLAND I and II have been a joint initiative of European Commission (EC) and European Space Agency (ESA), aiming at building up a European capacity for Global Monitoring of Environment and Security.

The GEOLAND consortium, with 56 partners, has developed and demonstrated a range of reliable, affordable and cost efficient European geo-information services, based on available Earth Observation resources in combination with in-situ measurements, supporting the implementation of European directives and their national implementation, as well as European and International policies.

At ECMWF the GEOLAND I and II projects have enabled the development of an offline modelling and data assimilation prototype for land surface Carbon and Vegetation cycles which had been subsequently adopted for operational modelling (in GEOLAND-2) and monitoring of CO2 fluxes and concentrations in the framework of the Copernicus Atmospheric Monitoring Services. More information on the GEOLAND projects and monitoring services are available at:

http://land.copernicus.eu

https://www.copernicus.eu/en/geoland2

This relies on CHTESSEL land surface scheme, operational since the 15 of November 2011 (cycle labelled 37R3) and part of the ECMWF Integrated Forecasting System (IFS) that has been extended to include the Natural land carbon dioxide emissions. This is part of an an effort to move towards Integrated environmental modelling, and it has been achieved in the framework of GEOLAND2 and MACC cooperation preparing for the European GMES Services, soon expected to access the Initial Operation phase (GIO).

This step was made possible by the availability of high-quality observations shared by the PIs' Consortia (ICOS, FLUXNET, CEOP, SRNWP Consortia have been used) that allowed extensive testing and calibration for the parameterizations, and thanks to the support of natural land carbon and biomass expertise from our partners.

Land Carbon Dioxide emissions simulated include the following fields:

• Net Ecosystem Exchange (NEE): The NEE is the net natural CO2 flux exchanged between the biosphere and the atmosphere as simulated by the CTESSEL scheme and constrained by the operational data assimilation system. This value is useful in Atmospheric simulations of CO2 concentration as it permits to simulate natural sources and sink of CO2 that together with ocean emission and anthropogenic emissions characterize the day-to-day variability in CO2. This is available in instantaneous values (FCO2NEE) and in accumulated values since the beginning of each forecast (ACO2NEE).

• Gross Primary Production (GPP): This quantity represent the CO2 fixed by the vegetation via the photosynthetic activity of the land biospheric component. This is available in instantaneous values (FCO2GPP) and in accumulated values since the beginning of each forecast (ACO2GPP).

• Ecosystem Respiration (RECO): This quantity represent the CO2 emitted by the soil via biogenic activity of the land biospheric component, including both the heterotrophic and autotrophic respirations. This is available in instantaneous values (FCO2REC) and in accumulated since the beginning of the forecast (ACO2REC).

References:
Boussetta, S., Balsamo G., Beljaars A., Agustí-Panareda A., Calvet J.-C., Jacobs C., van den Hurk B., Viterbo P., Lafont S., Dutra E., Jarlan L., Balzarolo M., Papale D., and van der Werf, G., 2013b: Natural land carbon dioxide exchanges in the ECMWF Integrated Forecasting System: Implementation and offline validation, J. Geophys. Res. 118, Issue 12, 5923–5946. doi: 10.1002/jgrd.50488.

Boussetta, S., G. Balsamo, A. Beljaars, T. Kral and L. Jarlan, 2013a:  Impact of a satellite-derived Leaf Area Index monthly climatology in a global Numerical Weather Prediction model. Int. J. Rem. Sens., 34, 3520-3542, doi:10.1080/01431161.2012.716543.