Plant and microbial nitrogen (N) dynamics and nitrogen availability regulate the photosynthetic capacity and capture, allocation, turnover of carbon (C) in terrestrial ecosystem. It is important to adequately represent plant N processes in land surface models. In this study, a plant C-N framework was developed by coupling a biophysical and dynamic land surface processes model, SSiB4/TRIFFID, with a soil organic matter cycling model, DayCent-SOM, to fully incorporate N regulations to investigate the impact of N on plant growth and C cycling. To incorporate the N limitation in the coupled system, the parameterization for dynamic C/N ratios for each plant functional type (PFT) was developed first. Then, after accounting for plant/soil N-cycling, when available N is less than demand, N would restrict the plant growth, reducing the net primary productivity (NPP), but also impact plant respiration rates and phenology. The improvements of the newly-developed model, the SSiB5/TRIFFID/DayCent-SOM, was preliminary verified at three flux tower sites with different PFTs. Furthermore, several offline global simulations were conducted from 1948 to 2007 to predict the long-term mean vegetation distribution and terrestrial C cycling, and the results are evaluated with satellite-derived observational data. The sensitivity of the terrestrial C cycle to N processes is also assessed. In general, new model can better reproduce observed emergent properties, including gross primary productivity (GPP), leaf area index (LAI), and respiration. The main improvements occur in tropical Africa and boreal regions, accompanied by a decrease of the bias in global GPP and LAI by 16.3% and 27.1%, respectively.

It is important to adequately represent plant nitrogen (N) biogeochemistry and its respective processes in land surface models. Thus far, various N representations in models lead to uncertainty in estimating model responses to global warming. Through plant and microbial N dynamics, nitrogen availability regulates the capture, allocation, turnover of carbon (C), and photosynthetic capacity. In this study, to fully incorporate these N regulations, we have developed a plant C-N framework by coupling a biophysical and dynamic land model, SSiB4/TRIFFID, with a soil organic matter cycling model, DayCent-SOM, to simulate the impact of nitrogen on the plant growth and C cycling. To incorporate the N limitation in the coupled system, we first developed the parameterization for the C/N ratios. Then, after accounting for daily plant/soil N-cycling, N will not only limit the plant growth when not sufficient, causing the net primary productivity (NPP) to be down-regulated, but will also impact plant respiration rates and phenology. Using this newly-developed model named SSiB5/TRIFFID/DayCent-SOM, we conduct several simulations from 1948 to 2007 to predict the global vegetation distribution and terrestrial C cycling, and the results are evaluated with satellite-derived observational data. The sensitivity of the terrestrial C cycle to N processes is also assessed. In general, the coupled model can better reproduce observed emergent properties, including gross primary productivity (GPP), NPP, leaf area index (LAI), and respiration. The main improvement occurs in tropical Africa and boreal regions, accompanied by a decrease of the bias in global GPP and LAI by 16.3% and 27.1%, respectively.

The response of atmospheric variability to the Tibetan Plateau (TP) snow cover (TPSC) at interannual to decadal time-scales has been extensively investigated. However, the response of the atmosphere to the subseasonal variability of the TPSC has been largely ignored. Here, we found that the subseasonal variability of the TPSC revealed by daily data can serve as an indicator of East Asian atmospheric circulation on medium-range time-scales (approximately 3–7 days in advance). The subseasonal variability of the TPSC influences the upper-level regional atmospheric circulations, especially the East Asia upper-level westerly jet stream (EAJS), during wintertime. The variability of the TPSC modulates the land surface thermal conditions over the TP, which acts as an elevated cooling source in the middle troposphere during wintertime. The upper-level geopotential height is affected by the TPSC and then the zonal wind. As a result, the EAJS is influenced.