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Description and Evaluation of the JULES-ES setup for ISIMIP2b
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  • Camilla Mathison,
  • Eleanor Burke,
  • Andrew Hartley,
  • Doug Kelley,
  • Eddy Robertson,
  • Chantelle Burton,
  • Nicola Gedney,
  • Karina Williams,
  • Andy Wiltshire,
  • Richard Ellis,
  • Alistair Sellar,
  • Christopher Jones
Camilla Mathison
Met Office Hadley Centre
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Eleanor Burke
Met Office Hadley Centre
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Andrew Hartley
Met Office Hadley Centre

Corresponding Author:[email protected]

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Doug Kelley
UK Centre for Ecology and Hydrology
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Eddy Robertson
Met Office Hadley Centre
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Chantelle Burton
Met Office Hadley Centre
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Nicola Gedney
Met Office Hadley Centre
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Karina Williams
Met Office Hadley Centre
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Andy Wiltshire
Met Office Hadley Centre
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Richard Ellis
UK Centre for Ecology and Hydrology
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Alistair Sellar
Met Office Hadley Centre
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Christopher Jones
Met Office Hadley Centre
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Abstract

Global studies of climate change impacts that use future climate model projections also require projections of land surface changes. Simulated land surface performance in Earth System models is often affected by climate biases of the atmospheric models, leading to errors in land surface projections. Here we run the JULES-ES land surface model with ISIMIP2b bias-corrected climate model data from 4 global climate models (GCMs). The bias correction reduces the impact of the climate biases present in individual models. We evaluate JULES-ES performance against present-day observations to demonstrate its usefulness for providing required information for impacts such as fire and river flow. We simulate a historical and two future scenarios; a mitigation scenario RCP2.6 and RCP6.0, which has very little mitigation. We include a standard JULES-ES configuration without fire as a contribution to ISIMIP2b and JULES-ES with fire as a potential future development. Simulations for gross primary productivity, evapotranspiration (ET) and albedo compare well against observations. Including fire improves the simulations, especially for ET and albedo and vegetation distribution, with some degradation in shrub cover and river flow. This configuration represents some of the most current earth system science for land surface modelling. The suite associated with this configuration provides a basis for past and future phases of ISIMIP, providing a simulation setup, postprocessing and initial evaluation using ILAMB. This suite ensures that it is as straightforward, reproducible and transparent as possible to follow the protocols and participate fully in ISIMIP using JULES.