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-
- AN OVERVIEW OF THE ISLSCP* INITIATIVE I GLOBAL DATA SETS
-
-
- P.J. Sellers(1), B.W. Meeson(2),
- J. Closs(3)
- J. Collatz(1)
- F. Corprew(3)
- D. Dazlich(4)
- F.G. Hall(1)
- Y. Kerr(5)
- R. Koster(6)
- S. Los(7)
- K. Mitchell(8)
- J. McManus(3)
- D. Myers(3)
- K.-J. Sun(3)
- P. Try(9)
-
-
- 1. NASA/GSFC, Code 923, Greenbelt, MD 20771
- 2. NASA/GSFC-DAAC, Code 902.2, Greenbelt, MD 20771
- 3. NASA/GSFC, HSTX, Code 902.2 Greenbelt, MD 20771
- 4. Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO 80523
- 5. LERTS - BPI, Toulouse Cedex, 31055, France
- 6. NASA/GSFC, Code 974, Greenbelt, MD 20771
- 7. NASA/GSFC, SSAI, Code 923, Greenbelt, MD 20771
- 8. NOAA/NMC, Camp Springs, MD 20746
- 9. International GEWEX Project Office, Washington, DC 20024
-
-
- * International Satellite Land Surface Climatology Project
-
-
- ABSTRACT
-
- In June of 1992, an interdisciplinary Earth Science workshop was convened
- in Columbia, Maryland, to assess recent progress in land-atmosphere research,
- specifically in the areas of models, satellite data algorithms, and field
- experiments. At the workshop, representatives of the land-atmosphere modeling
- community stated that they had a need for global data sets to prescribe
- boundary conditions, initialize state variables, and provide near-surface
- meteorological and radiative forcings for their models. The data sets
- collated on these CDs represent a first attempt to meet this need.
-
- The data sets on the CDs are grouped under the following headings: Vegetation;
- Hydrology and Soils; Snow, Ice, and Oceans; Radiation and Clouds; and Near-
- Surface Meteorology.
-
- All data sets cover the period 1987-1988, and all but a few are spatially
- continuous over Earth's land surface. All have been mapped to a common 1
- deg. x 1 deg. equal-angle grid. The temporal frequency for most of the data
- sets is monthly. A few of the near-surface meteorological parameters are
- available both as 6-hourly values and as monthly means.
-
-
- 1.0 BACKGROUND: The Motivation for Assembling the Initiative I Data Sets
-
- A workshop sponsored by the International Satellite Land Surface Climatology
- Project (ISLSCP), a component of the Global Energy and Water Cycle Experiment
- (GEWEX), was held in Columbia, Maryland, June 23 to 26, 1992, with over 240
- scientists and science managers attending. The goal of the workshop was to
- assess recent progress in the areas of modeling, satellite data algorithm
- development, and field experiments. An account of the workshop and many of
- the scientific presentations made there are written up in a special issue of
- the journal Remote Sensing of the Environment, 51, (1), 1995, so only a brief
- summary of the workshop's discussions and recommendations is given here.
-
- 1.1 MODELS
-
- The first part of the workshop was spent in reviewing the goals and
- requirements set by different kinds of land-atmosphere models. For
- convenience, the models were categorized by time scale into three broad
- groups, see Sellers et al.(1995) and Figure 1.
-
- Water-Energy-Carbon: These models are used to calculate the exchanges
- of water, energy, and carbon (photosynthesis and respiration) between
- the land surface and the atmosphere on relatively short time scales, on
- the order of seconds to seasons, see Dickinson (1995) and Bonan (1995).
- The models are used on small spatial scales for hydrological and
- agricultural studies; on the global scale, they are used to define the
- lower boundary fluxes for atmospheric general circulation models (GCMs)
- in which they are usually referred to as land surface parameterizations
- (LSPs). The more realistic biophysically-based LSPs implemented within
- GCMs over the last decade have been shown to produce better simulations
- of energy and water fluxes over the continents and thus should give rise
- to improved numerical weather prediction and climate simulations, see
- Betts et al. (1994), Noilhan et al. (1991) and Sato et al. (1989). All
- of these models have suffered from two general weaknesses. First, it was
- not clear that the descriptions of important flux-controlling processes,
- e.g., heat and moisture transfer within the vegetation-soil-atmosphere
- system could be credibly transferred from models and observations tested
- or conducted at very small scales to the scales of LSP-GCMs. Second, no
- generally acceptable methods were available to define the global state of
- vegetation and soil moisture for initialization or validation of the LSP-
- GCMs.
-
- Carbon and Biogeochemistry: The models appropriate to studies of carbon
- and biogeochemistry (BGC) span intermediate time scales, on the order of
- days to several years, see Schimel (1995) and Field et al. (1995). The
- important processes covered by these models include primary production,
- carbon allocation, decomposition, nutrient cycling and relations to the
- physical climate system (upstream), and ecosystem structure and function
- (downstream). It has been suggested that perturbations to the
- terrestrial carbon cycle, specifically imbalances between photosynthesis
- and respiration which would lead to carbon sink and source anomalies, may
- play important roles in the rate and timing of atmospheric carbon dioxide
- increases over the next few decades, see Tans et al. (1990). This class
- of models suffers from many of the same kind of handicaps as the Water
- Energy-Carbon models discussed above; in particular, global forcing
- (atmospheric conditions) and surface state (photosynthetic capacity,
- carbon storage in the soil, etc.) data are not freely available.
-
- Ecosystem Structure and Function: These models have a large overlap with
- the carbon and BGC models but span a wider range of time scales; most of
- these models have time steps on the order of months to years and are run
- to describe ecological processes over periods of years to millennia, see
- Bonan (1995). In large part, the models are forced by climate data, but
- data on soil physical and chemical properties, topography, etc., are also
- used as boundary conditions. Obviously, all data pertaining to land
- cover type phenology, biomass, etc., are useful for initializing and
- validating these models.
-
- The three classes of models described above originate from different
- scientific motivations and to a large extent from different science
- communities. However, they will all be essential for the study of Global
- Change and they all suffer from similar deficiencies, namely:
-
- (i) Scaling: All of the models suffer from the so-called scale gap to
- varying degrees. The results from small-scale process studies are
- usually combined with very simple aggregation assumptions to describe
- regional-scale processes and surface-atmosphere exchanges.
-
- (ii) Data Needs: Very few reliable, consistent, large-scale data sets exist
- in accessible form for the purposes of initialization and validation of
- these models on regional or global scales.
-
- In the first ISLSCP meetings of 1983 and 1984, it was hoped that a combination
- of large-scale field experiments and a stream of satellite data products would
- be used to deal with these two issues. Research work conducted within and
- parallel to the field experiments was to lead to improved algorithms which
- would then be used to generate better regional and global data sets. The 1992
- ISLSCP workshop reviewed the state of the algorithms and the contribution of
- the field experiments to these goals.
-
- 1.2 ALGORITHMS
-
- Satellite data algorithms that deal with land surface studies have been
- developed piecemeal under the aegis of the responsible government agencies.
- In 1987, an ISLSCP workshop reviewed the status of the algorithms, see Sellers
- et al. (1990) for a summary, and concluded that:
-
- (i) Algorithms were available to calculate many of the important surface
- and atmospheric state variables required by modelers.
-
- (ii) Few of the algorithms had been thoroughly evaluated with regard to
- accuracy and precision.
-
- (iii) There was a lot of room for improvement in the algorithms in terms of
- calibration, geometric correction, and cloud screening procedures.
-
- (iv) Few of the algorithms had been tested sufficiently or were innately
- robust enough for routine operational use.
-
- The 1992 workshop noted that there had been some progress in algorithm
- development over the period 1987-1992, particularly in the area of the Earth
- radiation budget work.
-
- 1.3 FIELD EXPERIMENTS
-
- The ISLSCP field experiments and parallel activities performed by the World
- Climate Research Program (WCRP), the International Geosphere-Biosphere Program
- (IGBP), and other organizations were designed to address the issues described
- in Section 1.1 above.
-
- The results from several experiments, including FIFE, HAPEX-Mobilhy and
- others were presented and discussed at the meeting. In broad summary, the
- principal findings were as follows:
-
- (i) Scaling Issues: The problems of scaling soil-vegetation-atmosphere
- models from local scales up to several kilometers do not appear to be
- as severe as originally feared. This point was reemphasized at a joint
- ISLSCP-BAHC (BAHC; Biological Aspects of the Hydrological Cycle - an
- element of IGBP) workshop held in Tucson, Arizona, in March 1994, which
- focused specifically on scaling. A number of studies presented at the
- workshop indicated that the radiative transfer and mass and heat
- transport models used to describe processes on the scale of individual
- plants or small plots could be used to calculate large-scale (10-50 km)
- surface-atmosphere fluxes to acceptable accuracies using relatively
- simple spatial-aggregation techniques. In some of these studies,
- explicit checks were made on the accuracy of these methods using a
- variety of surface and airborne instruments to cover the scale range
- from a few centimeters out to several kilometers.
-
- (ii) Use of Satellite Data: The field experiments sponsored by ISLSCP and
- other organizations involved the collection of integrated data sets,
- which allowed end-to-end evaluation of procedures for calculating
- surface state parameters from exoatmospheric radiances. It was found
- that several components of the surface radiation budget (insolation,
- downward photosynthetically active radiation (PAR), reflected
- shortwave) could be estimated from sensors on geostationary platforms
- to good accuracy and that useful estimates of downward longwave and net
- radiation could also be calculated. Satellite data were used to
- calculate surface biophysical parameters, including the fraction of
- photosynthetically active radiation absorbed by the green portion of
- the vegetation canopy (FPAR), unstressed stomatal conductance and
- photosynthetic capacity. These parameters have been used in simulation
- models to calculate the surface-atmosphere fluxes of carbon and water.
- Significantly, the remote sensing methodologies, the parameters, and
- the models themselves have been shown to be largely scale-invariant.
- This indicates that the local-scale models tested on the field
- experiment scale could be combined with large-scale satellite data sets
- to produce continental-scale fields of energy and mass (water and
- carbon dioxide) fluxes.
-
- The field experiments succeeded in dealing with the two major issues that
- framed their design. The next task was to take the lessons learned from the
- experiments and apply them to improve models and to generate better data sets.
- It can be argued that the modeling community directly benefited from the work:
- several off-line models and at least three operational GCMs currently utilize
- formulations that are based on field experiment results. However, it is also
- clear that the experimental results were only occasionally used to help
- generate improved large-scale data sets from satellite data.
-
- 1.4 THE NEED FOR GLOBAL DATA SETS
-
- It was concluded at the 1992 workshop that the communities working on model
- development and on past and planned field experiments had their activities in
- hand. However, it was made clear that the availability and accessibility of
- global data sets for land-atmosphere models were unsatisfactory.
-
- Each modeling group reaffirmed the need for global data sets for
- initialization and boundary conditions, forcing, and validation, see Figure 2.
- The stated intention was to thoroughly test the surface models independent of
- atmospheric models, which cannot be relied on to provide realistic forcings,
- so as to highlight the components of the land models that need attention.
- Figure 2 shows the roles of the different data required to do this task.
- These are summarized below:
-
- (i) Surface Boundary Conditions: Land cover type and associated
- biophysical attributes, including FPAR, leaf area index, roughness
- length, albedo, etc., are all necessary to specify the state and
- activity of vegetation in the models. Soils, snow cover and ice data
- are needed by hydrological submodels.
-
- (ii) Forcings: Near-surface meteorological conditions (temperature,
- humidity, wind speed), radiation fluxes and precipitation are needed by
- almost all land-atmosphere models. Many of the energy-water-carbon
- models require that the diurnal cycle be resolved in these data and
- that the precipitation forcing be divided into convective and large-
- scale fractions.
-
- (iii) Fluxes: The energy-water-carbon and biogeochemistry models calculate
- the land-atmosphere exchanges of energy, water, carbon, and trace
- constituents and changes in equivalent storage quantities within the
- vegetation-soil system. For example, land surface parameterizations in
- GCMs typically produce time-series of evapotranspiration, soil
- moisture, snow and ice storage, and runoff. With the exception of some
- satellite-derived surface radiation budget data sets, there are no
- truly global data sets available that can be used to continuously
- validate the output from these models; the communities have to make do
- with temporally and spatially sparse surface-atmosphere flux data sets,
- which are mainly derived from field experiment data, and a few runoff
- records.
-
- Within this framework, each modeling group prepared its own prioritized list
- of data sets. When these were analyzed and compared, it was found that there
- was a large overlap in the stated requirements. Table 1 lists the
- consolidated data needs as prioritized across the three working groups at the
- workshop. At the time, these high priority data sets were perceived to be
- unavailable or inaccessible to the modeling community. Specifically;
-
- (i) Operational meteorological agencies generate streams of 4-dimensional
- data assimilation (4DDA) products, including near-surface meteorology,
- radiation fluxes, soil moisture fields, etc., but the required
- information specified by the working groups was expensive and difficult
- to extract from the product archives.
-
- (ii) Very few satellite-based data products were actually available.
-
- (iii) Other data sets based on surface survey work (soils, topography,
- runoff were available but required considerable further analysis or
- reduction to make them directly useful to the modelers.
-
- With regard to data accessibility, it was thought that with some effort the
- situation could be greatly improved. In most cases, such as the 4DDA
- products, soils information, topography, etc., it was thought to be more a
- question of institutions deciding to take on the job and committing resources
- to see it through, rather than the solution of difficult technical problems.
-
- The situation with respect to data availability was different: archives of
- satellite data certainly existed in the form of instrument counts,
- exoatmospheric radiances, or in some cases atmospherically-corrected surface
- radiances. In only a handful of cases, for example the International
- Satellite Cloud Climatology Project (ISCCP) cloud products and the Earth
- Radiation Budget Experiment (ERBE) surface (clear-sky) albedo products, were
- there global fields of surface or atmospheric parameters. For some of the
- satellite-based products specified in Table 1 (vegetation, incident PAR,
- insolation), the raw satellite data existed but the processing had not been
- carried through to the production of global data sets of physical or
- biophysical parameters. However, most of the necessary tools and materials
- for undertaking such a project were available at the time of the workshop:
- the data existed, many of the algorithms had been developed and tested using
- field experiment data, and the required data product list was defined. What
- was required was an initiative to bring all of these things and the
- appropriate scientific expertise together to actually produce the global data
- sets. It was repeatedly pointed out that huge resources had been expended by
- agencies to design and launch satellite instruments, collect and archive the
- observations, and conduct the necessary investigations to understand and use
- the data. The final step, applying recent scientific experience to produce
- global data sets of useful and usable parameters, was a clear priority and
- would be relatively cheap to execute, but had been done in only a few cases.
- These general assessments formed the basis for some specific recommendations.
-
- 1.5 WORKSHOP RECOMMENDATIONS
-
- Three initiatives were put forward by the workshop. These cover the immediate
- generation of global data sets, the improvement of methodologies and
- algorithms for follow-on data sets, and the improvement of communications
- between different elements of the Land Science community. These are discussed
- in turn below.
-
- INITIATIVE I. Immediate Generation of High Priority Global Data Sets
-
- The original 1992 workshop recommendation is restated more or less verbatim
- here. "It is proposed that some essential global data sets could be put
- together within 2 years, i.e., by the summer of 1994, and released to the
- community. Existing or planned data management systems should be involved in
- this effort from the beginning. The data sets are listed in order of priority
- in Table 1 and are shown schematically in Figure 2. The workshop made the
- following recommendations for the four areas of vegetation, hydrometeorology,
- radiation, and soils.
-
- Vegetation: Global, monthly data sets of vegetation-related parameters should
- be generated at good spatial resolution 1(00 x 100 km or better is preferred)
- and monthly time resolution. The available AVHRR data should be used as the
- basis of this effort and algorithms applied to calculate fields of cover type,
- phenology, FPAR and leaf area index.
-
- Hydrometeorology: Near-surface meteorological data sets should be extracted
- from the 4-dimensional data assimilation (4DDA) streams generated by
- operational meteorological agencies. Specifically, near-surface temperature,
- humidity, wind vector, surface temperature, soil moisture content, radiation
- components and precipitation should all be saved. Temporal resolution should
- be sufficient to resolve the diurnal cycle (preferably four or more reports
- per day).
-
- A number of institutions hold archives of rainfall data. A gridded product
- (100 x 100 km or better) is required with monthly time resolution and some
- information, direct or indirect, on the proportion of convective to large-
- scale precipitation. Runoff data is stored at the Global Runoff Data Center
- (GRDC) in Germany -- these data should be processed to yield mm/day numbers
- (monthly means) for selected large catchments. This data subset would be of
- more direct use to modelers.
-
- Snow and ice data are collated by NOAA and NASA in the U.S. and also by
- Canadian and Russian operational agencies, largely from analyses of optical
- satellite data and in situ observations. The temporal resolution of the data
- should be sufficient to resolve weather-related changes in snow extent.
-
- Radiation: There is a strong desire to have many components of the surface
- radiation budget available at resolutions down to 50 x 50 km, although it is
- clear the community could do good work with coarser resolution (250 x 250 km)
- products. Again, the temporal resolution should be sufficient to resolve the
- diurnal cycle. ISCCP holds data sets on insolation and longwave fluxes on a
- 250 x 250 km grid. The continuing ERBE work provides surface albedo estimates
- and net surface shortwave radiation fluxes on the same scale.
-
- Soils, Soil Moisture, and Topography: Global soils data sets with
- quantitative even if only best-guess, soils physics and soils chemistry
- information are needed. Soil texture, depth, porosity, mineralogy, and pH
- fields are required by some water-energy-vegetation and most biogeochemistry
- modelers. A data set could be quickly generated based on the Food and
- Agricultural Organization (FAO) global 1 deg. x 1 deg. data base and
- supporting or related information.
-
- Soil moisture information is very useful for validating all classes of models
- It was recommended that the soil moisture remote sensing community be tasked
- with producing some global or regional products from existing sources, such as
- in situ observations and spaceborne microwave sensors (e.g., SSM/I), even if
- this turns out to give only qualitative spatial and temporal patterns of soil
- moisture climatology, rather than precise information at a single point under
- ideal retrieval conditions. (These patterns would be very useful for checking
- 4DDA fields and other soil moisture estimates).
-
- Good topographic data sets are available but not easily accessible. Every
- effort should be made to extract the best available product from the U.S.
- Geological Survey (USGS) or the Defense Mapping Agency (DMA).
-
- This recommendation framed ISLSCP Initiative I. After the 1992 workshop, an
- ad hoc ISLSCP Science Steering Committee supported by staff at NASA GSFC
- worked to put together a mutually consistent collection of data sets that
- would meet the needs expressed in Table 1. This effort has resulted in the
- issue of this collection of CDs, the contents of which are summarized in
- section 2. In large part, these data sets satisfy the requirements stated in
- Table 1, except for those specifying soil chemical properties, which hopefully
- will be addressed by elements of IGBP, and topography, which is being handled
- by a team at EROS Data Center as part of the Earth Observing System (EOS)
- project. It should be noted that, as requested, all the data were reformatted
- to a common 1 deg. x 1 deg. grid and cover the same period, 1987-1988.
-
- The Initiative I CDs should be an invaluable resource for initializing,
- forcing, and validating all three classes of land models, see Figure 2. One
- example; the International Geosphere-Biosphere Project (IGBP) may use the CDs
- as a baseline initial condition and meteorological forcing data set for a
- global carbon model intercomparison exercise. Another example; the data on
- the CDs will be used to force offline versions of land surface
- parameterizations (LSPs) to calculate more realistic global fields of
- hydrological variables including; evapotranspiration, soil moisture, runoff,
- etc. This last project is sponsored by GEWEX-ISLSCP and IGBP-BAHC. Besides
- these and similar applications, the data set will provide a strong starting
- position for global studies that will help the Land Science community prepare
- for the Earth Observing System data stream.
-
- INITIATIVE II. Improved, Follow-On Data Sets
-
- The data sets specified in Initiative I were generated over a 2 year period
- i.e., with existing data and the available robust and simple algorithms. The
- resulting products go some way toward satisfying the immediate needs of the
- modelers and will exercise every aspect of the data-algorithm-modeler pipeline
- as well as (hopefully) a data system or two en route. However, it is clear
- that great improvements could be made over this first data release, mainly in
- the areas of temporal coverage, algorithm improvement, and validation. ISLSCP
- Initiative II has the aim of releasing an improved set of global data in 1997,
- which should cover the period 1986-1995.
-
- INITIATIVE III. Improved Communications Within the Land Science Community
-
- The workshop highlighted the extent to which related research thrusts can
- become separated from each other even when it is obvious that there are strong
- mutual scientific interests at stake. It was recognized that top-down
- coordination by management could provide only part of the answer. It is
- equally important to provide regular forums where the different communities
- discuss their areas of overlap on a scientist-to-scientist basis. It was
- observed that many recent workshops had drifted into within-discipline
- discussions (e.g., wish-list writing, experiment design, etc.) with little
- time to focus on the so-called bottleneck issues (e.g., implementation of
- algorithms to produce global data sets, incorporation of late-developing model
- needs into experiment design, etc.). Clearly, these cross-cutting issues need
- explicit attention.
-
-
- 2.0 ASSEMBLING THE INITIATIVE I GLOBAL DATA SETS
-
- 2.1 SPECIFICATION OF THE PROPERTIES OF THE DATA SET
-
- The workshop recommendations for Initiative I provided the starting point for
- the collection, compilation and documentation of the global data sets
- necessary to satisfy the requirements summarized in Table 1 and section 1.5.
- Immediately after the 1992 workshop, a team at NASA GSFC started to
- communicate with possible sources of the required data and worked to define
- the form of the final product.
-
- The previous section mentioned that modelers were frequently hampered by the
- need to match up incongruent data sets, a task that not only wastes time but
- can also inject artifacts into the data so that model-to-model comparisons
- become less exact, depending on the type and number of regridding or
- interpolation operations performed on the original data. Initiative I
- specified the need for uniform data sets, which is interpreted to mean that
- the data sets should have as far as possible the same spatial and temporal
- resolutions, time period, and area of coverage (i.e., no spatial or temporal
- gaps) and be supported by uniform documentation. In principle, it should be
- possible to operate a land-atmosphere model continuously over the entire
- spatial and temporal domain of the data without encountering problems, such as
- missing data, in the process. Similarly, it should be possible to select any
- grid point and access all the necessary data to initialize and force a land-
- surface model over the period covered by the data set. To satisfy these
- requirements, the data should be spatially and temporally uniform and
- contiguous, and should also be uniform "vertically"; that is, a common spatial
- resolution allows for the 'stacking' of different data sets over the same grid
- area, which makes for much easier 1-dimensional model operation. Taking Table
- 1 as a basis, the team surveyed available data sources and decided on the
- following attributes for the final products.
-
- Spatial Resolution: All data were obtained or were regridded to a single 1
- deg. x 1 deg. equal-angle grid. The sides of each grid box are specified by
- integer latitude/longitude lines. A single land mask was applied to all the
- data.
-
- The regridding procedure was very simple: a 1 deg. x 1 deg. grid was laid over
- the source data field and area-weighted averages of the values falling within
- each new grid square were calculated. No smoothing or other interpolation
- procedures were applied to the data except where data were missing, in which
- case simple interpolation schemes were used. These schemes are described in
- detail in the data set documentation on the CDs.
-
- Temporal Resolution: The temporal resolutions of the data sets are nested to
- resolve the diurnal and seasonal cycles as appropriate, see Table 2. The
- forcing data sets--near-surface meteorology, radiation, and precipitation--are
- provided as 6-hourly values so that the diurnal cycle is resolved as requested
- by the energy-water-carbon modelers. Most of the other data sets are monthly
- (e.g., vegetation attributes) or fixed (e.g., soil type). Some of the
- shortwave radiation data are presented as diurnally resolved, monthly means;
- that is, for each month, eight mean radiation fields are provided at 3-hourly
- GMT intervals: 0000Z, 0300Z, 0600Z and so on.
-
- Spatial Coverage: With a few well-documented exceptions (runoff, snow cover
- and depth, and some of the radiation products), all the data are spatially
- continuous over the specified land mask. In some cases, this meant that data
- sets had to be interpolated spatially so as to prevent leaving holes; when
- this was done, a mask showing which data points were synthesized was
- generated. The objective was to provide a reliable data set that would allow
- continuous operation of land-atmosphere models without having to invoke
- complex procedures to deal with null data points. The exceptions are
- represented by data sets that are to be used for validation rather than model
- operation.
-
- Temporal Coverage: The initial requirement was for 1 year's worth of data.
- This was extended to 2 years to provide some notion of interannual
- variability. It was decided to choose contiguous years for ease of model
- operation. The period 1987-1988 was selected, as it covers a period when many
- of the source data sets were simultaneously available and also covers wet
- (1987) and dry (1988) summer conditions in North America.
-
- Formatting and Documentation: A variety of data formatting options were
- considered. It was finally decided that in order to ensure the easiest and
- widest possible use of the data, all of the data sets would be represented as
- simple ASCII files. Each global field starts at 90 deg. N, 180 deg. W and is
- read 360 grid cells toward the east before dropping down a row to start again
- at 89 deg. N, 180 deg. W; in other words, the data read like written text from
- the North pole and dateline southward. Data at very high latitudes are
- usually meaningless due to the small areas involved; in these cases, the grid
- cells are filled by replicating values from adjacent cells. Nulls in the data
- sets are represented by negative nines which are specified at the same
- numerical resolution as the data; e.g., the null for a 3 digit number is -999.
-
- The documentation follows a consistent format across all the data sets, see
- Table 3. This has obvious advantages; after a short learning process, the
- user can easily target specific sections to get the desired information on any
- of the data sets. The documentation is also fairly detailed so that the user
- is not directed to external sources of information except for really indepth
- material on sensors or analysis techniques. References are provided.
-
- 2.2 COMPILATION OF THE DATA SETS
-
- The data sets are organized into the following categories on the CD.
-
- Vegetation: Land Cover and Biophysics
- Hydrology and Soils
- Snow, Ice, and Oceans
- Radiation and Clouds
- Near-Surface Meteorology
-
- The subsections below briefly review the contents of each of these data
- categories, further information can be found in the documentation accompanying
- each data set.
-
- 2.2.1 VEGETATION: Land Cover and Biophysics (Table 2A)
-
- The basis for this data set is the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index
- (NDVI) data set calculated from AVHRR data by Los et al. (1994) following the
- work of Tucker et al. (1986). These data were already in the form of a 1 deg.
- x 1 deg. monthly composited NDVI data set; i.e., no further single channel
- data or geometric information were available at the time. Some simple
- procedures were used to fill in gaps in the data set, and crude corrections
- were made to account for the effects of solar angle and persistent clouds to
- make the temporally and spatially continuous FASIR-NDVI product, see Sellers
- et al. (1994). The FASIR-NDVI data were used to create fields of FPAR, leaf
- area index, and greenness, which in turn were used to calculate monthly snow-
- free albedo and surface roughness fields, see Sellers et al. (1994). The
- land/sea mask associated with these data sets was adopted as the standard for
- masking the other data placed on the CD.
-
- All of these operations, starting with the production of the FASIR-NDVI
- fields, require some assumptions about land cover type. DeFries and Townshend
- (1994) analyzed NDVI data to specify the distribution of land cover types for
- the world. This classification map was used to apply vegetation cover-
- specific algorithms for the calculation of the higher order products listed in
- Table 2A. The documentation for this data set also includes parameter values
- associated with each vegetation type as used in the SiB2 model of Sellers et
- al. (in prep.).
-
- Soil background fields had to be specified as lower boundary conditions for
- the calculation of the snow-free albedo in Table 2A. For the most part,
- background (soil or litter layer) reflectances were assigned values typical of
- each vegetation type, as specified in DeFries and Townshend (1994), in the
- same way as was done by Dorman and Sellers (1989). However, this procedure
- resulted in some problems in sparsely-vegetated regions so ERBE data were used
- to estimate surface reflectances in desert areas between 45 deg. S and 45 deg.
- N, see Sellers et al. (1994).
-
- Last, the documentation for this data set includes parameter values associated
- with each vegetation type as used in the SiB2 model of Sellers et al. (in
- prep.).
-
- 2.2.2 HYDROLOGY AND SOILS (Table 2B)
-
- The Global Precipitation Climatology Project (GPCP) reanalyzed their archive
- of surface rain gauge data to produce a 1 deg. x 1 deg. monthly precipitation
- product for 1987-1988. The standard land/sea mask was applied by the
- publication group at NASA GSFC, see Figure 3. The Global Runoff Data Center
- (GRDC) contributed monthly river runoff rate data for 14 basins together with
- information on the location of the gauges and the catchment area upstream of
- the gauge. The percentage of each 1 deg. x 1 deg. grid area covered by lakes,
- rivers, and marshes was obtained from data published by Cogley (1991).
-
- The Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) archive on soil properties has
- been extensively scrutinized by researchers at the University of Arizona
- (Sorooshian, Amer), NASA GSFC (Koster) and at NASA GISS (Zobler). These
- analyses were combined to create consistent global fields of soil texture,
- depth, and slope.
-
- 2.2.3 SNOW, ICE AND OCEANS (Table 2C)
-
- NOAA NESDIS provides a weekly analysis of Northern Hemisphere snow cover from
- optical satellite data; the analyses are done by hand. Robinson (pers. comm.)
- of Rutgers University provided these data after regridding them to 1 deg. x 1
- deg. The U.S. Air Force assembles a monthly snow depth map based on a variety
- of sources including satellite data and in situ measurements carried out at
- reporting airfields. The NOAA National Meteorological Center (NMC) provided
- analyses of sea ice cover and sea surface temperature at monthly time
- resolution at the required 1 deg. x 1 deg. resolution. The land/sea mask was
- then applied at GSFC. Last, a fine resolution map of the land-ocean boundary
- was provided by the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) based on
- data collated by the U.S. Navy.
-
- Global monthly fields of sea surface temperature (SST) and sea ice
- concentration were also included in the data set in response to requests from
- GCM modelers who wished to have a complete set of surface boundary conditions
- on the CD.
-
- 2.2.4 RADIATION AND CLOUDS (Table 2D)
-
- Pinker and Laszlo of the University of Maryland processed the satellite data
- analyses held in the ISCCP archive, see Schiffer and Rossow (1985), to create
- five global radiation products. The 2.5 deg. x 2.5 deg. ISCCP data were used
- to generate estimates of the surface and top of the atmosphere (TOA) incident
- and upwelling shortwave fluxes. In addition, the surface downwelling PAR flux
- was also calculated. These estimates were generated every 3 hours based on
- GMT observing times, i.e., 0000Z, 0300Z, 0600Z, etc. To reduce the noise in
- their products, Pinker and Laszlo averaged the observations for each 3-hour
- period by month to produce a mean diurnal cycle of eight (monthly-averaged)
- values for each month in 1987-1988. NASA LaRC used a similar methodology to
- generate monthly means (not diurnally resolved) of surface incident and net
- shortwave and longwave radiation, and net radiation, see Darnell et al.
- (1992).
-
- The ISCCP group at NASA GISS generated a series of cloud parameters from
- analyses of the ISCCP C2 satellite data archive. These include cloud amount,
- cloud top pressure, cloud optical thickness, and cloud water paths, see Rossow
- et al. (1991) and Rossow and Schiffer (1991).
-
- The ERBE S4 clear-sky albedo product was generated from composites of
- satellite data, see Barkstrom et al. (1990). These data are provided as
- monthly means and do not extend beyond the solar terminator. They are likely
- to be dubious in persistently cloudy areas.
-
- All the products described above were originally generated on a 2.5 deg. x 2.5
- deg. equal-area grid, which was reprocessed at NASA GSFC onto the 1 deg. x 1
- deg. grid used by ISLSCP, see Figure 3. However, the standard land/sea mask
- was not applied to any of these data sets. The diurnally resolved data of
- Pinker and Laszlo had some 'holes' in it due to gaps in some of the
- geostationary satellite data records used to create the ISCCP product. These
- "holes" were patched using a simple temporal interpolation technique that made
- use of solar angle information; the patched areas are flagged in the final 1
- deg. x 1 deg. product. Some of the NASA GISS cloud product fields are also
- discontinuous; in particular, there are gaps close to and a complete lack of
- data above the solar terminator for some of the fields.
-
- The radiation and clouds data are intended to be used as follows. The
- University of Maryland and NASA LaRC products are useful for forcing models;
- these are probably the best current estimates that we have for global surface
- radiation fluxes. We have further used these data in combination with GCM
- output to synthesize estimates of the downwelling shortwave and longwave
- fluxes every 6 hours, see next section. The ISCCP cloud products may be
- useful for testing atmospheric radiation models. The ERBE clear-sky albedo
- product may be useful for validating model-generated fields, in particular the
- effects of snow when combined with the snow-free albedo fields described in
- section 2.2.1. (Table 2A).
-
- 2.2.5 NEAR-SURFACE METEOROLOGY (Table 2E)
-
- The bulk of the near-surface meteorological products on the CD were extracted
- from the ECMWF operational forecast analysis archive. The data set consists
- of time-series of meteorological variables at 6-hourly intervals (0000Z,
- 0600Z, 1200Z, 1800Z) and monthly 6-hourly averages of these and many other
- diagnostic and prognostic variables. The meteorological variables that are
- required to force land-atmosphere models with resolved diurnal cycles were
- extracted from this stream: surface pressure, air temperature, dew point, and
- wind speed (magnitude). It was also desired to have incident shortwave and
- longwave radiation fluxes and precipitation rates, preferably broken into
- large-scale and convective components, at the same 6-hourly temporal
- resolution. However, the ECMWF output did not contain precipitation rates,
- and their radiation flux estimates were thought to be biased due to a
- systematic underestimation of cloud cover by the model version used to
- generate these products. To fill the gap, the NASA GSFC team generated hybrid
- radiation products: the time-series of ECMWF estimates of surface shortwave
- and longwave fluxes were used to divide up the NASA LaRC satellite-based
- monthly radiation fluxes into 6-hourly intervals. This resulted in the
- synthesis of 6-hourly incident shortwave and longwave fluxes that add up to
- match the NASA LaRC monthly means. A similar procedure was used at NMC by
- Mitchell to generate 6-hourly estimates of precipitation. Six-hourly total
- and convective precipitation fields from the 4DDA-based NMC Reanalysis Project
- (Kalnay and Jenne, 1991) were used to partition the observed monthly GPCP
- precipitation products into 6-hourly time series of estimated total and
- convective precipitation, wherein the total precipitation added up to match
- the GPCP monthly totals. In this procedure, a screening was applied, based on
- the FGGE daily rainfall data, following Liston et al. (1993), to better
- reproduce the observed frequency of measurable daily rainfall. All of this
- effort has resulted in a temporally and spatially consistent meteorological
- forcings data set with a 6-hourly timestep, see Table 2E(iii).
-
- These quantities, and some others that were held on the ECMWF record at 6-
- hourly resolution, were processed to provide monthly 6-hourly mean products
- and statistics, see Table 2E(ii). Of particular interest are the ECMWF-
- generated estimates of the surface radiation and heat fluxes.
-
- Monthly mean fields and associated statistics of some of the prescribed or
- initial fields of surface boundary conditions used by ECMWF are listed in
- Table 2E(i). These fields were generated from a variety of sources (see the
- documentation) and are not recommended as initialization or boundary condition
- fields for current modelers; they are provided as information to help users
- understand what assumptions were made in generating the forcing fields in
- Table 2E(iii). For example, the ECMWF snow-free albedo field is based on the
- products of Dorman and Sellers (1989), which are thought to be less accurate
- than the satellite-data based products described in Section 2.2.1.
-
- All the ECMWF fields were converted from grid cell corner point values to
- values representative of the entire (ECMWF) grid cell; these were then
- converted to the ISLSCP 1 deg. x 1 deg. grid and the land/sea mask was
- applied, see Figure 3.
-
- In summary, a combination of products from operational meteorological agencies
- (ECMWF and NMC); satellite-data based radiation estimates (NASA LaRC); and
- global surface rain gauge analyses (GPCP) have been used to generate time-
- series of the required near-surface model forcings for the period 1987-1988 at
- a 6-hourly time resolution. These are supported by a range of ancillary time-
- averaged quantities that may be useful for forcing models that run on a
- monthly timestep.
-
- 2.3 PEER REVIEW
-
- A peer review process was organized by Kerr and Meeson to ensure the quality
- of the data and documentation to be placed on the CDs. In the first stage,
- the documentation was reviewed by individuals familiar with the data sets but
- not directly involved in writing the documentation. The intent of this review
- was twofold; first, to provide a "second opinion" and second, to ensure the
- accuracy and clarity of the documentation. The reviewers were asked to
- identify subtle as well as major inaccuracies or gaps that only someone
- familiar with the data set would know. To provide a uniform and consistent
- review of the documents, a set of document review guidelines and a response
- form were drafted and sent with the documents to all document reviewers.
- Comments or corrections received from these reviewers were addressed and
- incorporated into documentation before it moved on to the second stage of the
- review procedure.
-
- In the second stage, reviewers were sent both the revised documentation and
- the data, and were asked to examine them using a common set of criteria.
- These criteria focused on the identification of errors or inaccuracies within
- the data and related documentation. The reviewers were selected for their
- general familiarity with the type of data that they were to review. This
- stage of the review process was completed in two workshops that focused on the
- mutual consistency of the data sets and documentation. The findings of these
- workshops and the individual data reviews are summarized in the paper of Kerr
- et al., also reproduced on this CD.
-
-
- 3.0 SUMMARY
-
- The Initiative I data sets should provide modelers with many of the fields
- required to prescribe boundary conditions, and to initialize and force a wide
- range of land-biosphere-atmosphere models. All of the data have been
- processed to the same spatial resolution (1 deg. x 1 deg.), using the
- same land/sea mask and steps have been taken to ensure spatial and temporal
- continuity of the data. The data sets cover the period 1987-1988 at 1-monthly
- time resolution for most of the seasonally varying quantities and at 6-hourly
- resolution for the near-surface meteorological and radiative forcings.
-
- ISLSCP Initiative II aims to improve on this effort by covering a longer time
- period (1986-1995), at higher spatial resolution (0.5 deg. x 0.5 deg.), using
- superior data sources and algorithms where possible. In addition, GEWEX-
- ISLSCP and other organizations, for example IGBP-BAHC, are pursuing approaches
- for collating validation data sets to check the Initiative II data sets at a
- few times and places embedded within these global data sets.
-
-
- REFERENCES
-
- Barkstrom, B.R., E.F. Harrison, and R.B. Lee (1990). Earth Radiation Budget
- Experiment, preliminary seasonal results. EOS Transactions. American
- Geophysical Union. 71, February 27.
-
- Betts, A.K., J.H. Ball, A.C.M. Beljaars, M.J. Miller, and P.Viterbo (1994).
- Coupling between land-surface boundary-layer parameterizations and rainfall on
- local and regional scales: Lessons from the wet summer of 1993. Fifth
- Conference on Global Change Studies: Amer. Meteor. Society Proceedings. 74th
- Annual Meeting, Nashville, TN, Jan. 23-28, 1994.
-
- Bonan, G.B. (1995). Land-atmosphere interactions for climate system models:
- Coupling biophysical, biogeochemical, and ecosystem dynamical processes. Rem.
- Sens. Env. 51:1:57-73.
-
- Cogley, J.G. (1991). GGHYDRO-global hydrographic data, release 2. Available
- from the author at Trent University, Ontario, CANADA.
-
- Darnell, W.L., W.F. Staylor, S.K. Gupta, N.A. Ritchey, and A.C. Wilber (1992).
- Seasonal variation of surface radiation budget derived from ISCCP-C1 data. J.
- Geophys. Res. 97:15741-15760.
-
- DeFries, R.S., and J.R.G. Townshend (1994). NDVI-derived land cover
- classification at global scales. I. J. of Remote Sensing. 15:17:3567-3586.
-
- Dickinson, R.E. (1995). Land processes in climate models. Rem. Sens. Env.
- 51:1:27-38.
-
- Dorman, J.L., and P.J. Sellers (1989). A global climatology of albedo,
- roughness length, and stomatal resistance for atmospheric general circulation
- models as represented by the Simple Biosphere Model (SiB). J. Appl. Met.
- 28:9:833-855.
-
- Field, C.B., C.M. Malmstrom, J.T. Randerson (1995). Ecosystem net primary
- production: combining ecology and remote sensing. Rem. Sens. Env. 51:1:74-88.
-
- Kalnay, E., and R. Jenne (1991). Summary of the NMC/NCAR reanalysis. Bull.
- Amer. Meteor. Soc. 72:897-1904.
-
- Liston, G.E., Y.C. Sud, and G. Walker (1993). Design of a global soil moisture
- initialization procedure for the Simple Biosphere model. NASA Tech. Memo.
- 104590. Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD.
-
- Los, S.O., C.O. Justice, and C.J. Tucker (1994). A 1 deg. x 1 deg. global NDVI
- data set for climate studies derived from the GIMMS continental NDVI data. I.
- J. of Remote Sensing. 15:3493-3518.
-
- Noilhan, J., P. Bougeault, B. Bretl, and P. LaCarrere (1991). An example of
- spatial integration of a land surface parameterization in meso-beta scale
- model. In Land Surface Evaporation. Eds Schmugge and Andre. Springer-Verlag,
- New York. 383-402.
-
- Rossow, W.B., L.C. Garder, P.J. Lu, and A. Walker (1991). International
- Satellite Cloud Climatology Project (ISLSCP): Documentation of cloud data.
- Tech. Doc. WMO/TD-No. 266 (revised). World Meteorological Organization.
- Geneva. 76 p. plus three appendices.
-
- Rossow, W.B., and R.A. Schiffer (1991). ISCCP cloud data products. Bull. Amer.
- Meteor. Soc. 72:2-20.
-
- Sato, N., P.J. Sellers, D.A. Randall, E.K. Schneider, J. Kinter III, J.
- Shukla, Y-T Hou, and E. Albertazzi (1989). Effects of implementing the simple
- biosphere model (SiB) in a general circulation model. J. Atmos. Sci.
- 46:18:2757-2782.
-
- Schiffer, R.A., and W.B. Rossow (1985). ISCCP Global Radiance Data Set. A new
- resource for climate research. Bull. Am. Meteorol. Soc. 66:1498-1505.
-
- Schimel, D.S. (1995). Terrestrial biogeochemical cycles: Global estimates with
- remote sensing. Rem. Sens. Env. 51:1:49-56.
-
- Sellers, P.J., D.A. Randall, C.J. Collatz, J.A. Berry, C.B. Field, D.A.
- Dazlich, C. Zhang, and G.D. Collelo (in prep.). A revised land surface
- parameterization (SiB2) for atmospheric GCMs. Part 1: Model formulation.
- Submitted to J. of Climate.
-
- Sellers, P.J., B.W. Meeson, F.G. Hall, G. Asrar, R.E. Murphy, R.A. Schiffer,
- F.P. Bretherton, R.E. Dickinson, R.G. Ellingson, C.B. Field, K.F. Huemmrich,
- C.O. Justice, J.M. Melack, N.T. Roulet, D.S. Schimel, and P.D. Try (1995).
- Remote sensing of the land surface for studies of global change: Models-
- algorithms-experiments. Rem. Sens. Env. 15:1:3-26.
-
- Sellers, P.J., S.O. Los, C.J. Tucker, C.O. Justice, D.A. Dazlich, G.J.
- Collatz, and D.A. Randall (1994). A global 1 deg. x 1 deg. NDVI data set for
- climate studies. Part 2: The generation of global fields of terrestrial
- biophysical parameters from the NDVI. I. J. Remote Sensing. 15:7:3519-3545.
-
- Sellers, P.J., S.I. Rasool, and H-J. Bolle (1990). A review of satellite data
- algorithms for studies of the land surface. Bull. Amer. Met. Soc. 71:10:1429-
- 1447.
-
- Tans, P.P., I.Y. Fung, and T. Takahashi (1990). Observational constraints on
- the global atmospheric carbon dioxide budget. Science. 247:1431-1438.
-
- Tucker, C.J., I.Y. Fung, C.D. Keeling and R.H. Gammon (1986). Relationship
- between atmospheric carbon dioxide variations and a satellite-derived
- vegetation index. Nature. 319:195-199.
-
-
- ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
-
-
- Many people and organizations worked hard to turn Initiative I into a reality.
-
- First, special thanks are due to Ghassem Asrar of NASA Headquarters; David
- Schimel of CSMP; TERRA Laboratory, a consortium of the USDA's Agriculture
- Resource Service (Steve Rawling and Don DeCoursey); the USDA's Forest Service
- (Doug Fox); and the USGS (Ray Watts) for providing financial support for the
- 1992 ISLSCP Workshop that started the activity. The bulk of the funding came
- from the EOS program at NASA HQ. Dr. Asrar is particularly thanked for his
- unflagging moral support of this effort from start to finish.
-
- Next, financial support for the data compilation and production phase of the
- CDs was provided by Drs. Bob Murphy and Tony Janetos of NASA HQ.
- Encouragement was provided by the chair of WCRP-GEWEX, Dr. Moustafa Chahine
- and the Director of WCRP, Dr. Pierre Morel. All are warmly thanked. The
- support of NASA Headquarters, Office of Mission to Planet Earth, the
- Operations, Data and Information Systems Division, and the Science Division
- are gratefully acknowledged. The authors would also like to thank the EOS-
- DIS, Goddard Distributed Active Archive Center (GSFC-DAAC) for their support
- of this work.
-
- In addition to review work done by the authors, the data sets and
- documentation were reviewed by volunteers in the community: Nigel Arnell,
- Lahouari Bounoua, Peter Briggs, Gerard Dedieu, Bob Dickinson, Han Dolman, John
- Gash, Barry Goodison, Fred Huemmrich, Alfredo Huete, John Janoviak, Jenny
- Lean, Jean-Claude Menaut, Joel Noilhan, Michael Raupach, Chet Ropelewski, Bill
- Rossow, Steve Running, T.R.E. Thompson, Anne Walker, Ivan Wright, YongKang
- Xue.
-
- In many cases, the donors of the data sets gave up a great deal of their time
- in addition to the data sets; all are thanked for the help. The list of
- individuals includes:
-
- Vegetation: Land Cover and Biophysics
- Jim Tucker, Chris Justice, Sietse Los, Piers Sellers, Don Dazlich, Jim
- Collatz, Nazmi El Saleous, Ruth DeFries, John Townshend, Ed Harrison.
-
- Hydrology and Soils
- Wolfgang Grabs, Arnold Gruber, J.G. Cogley, Saud Amer, Soroosh
- Sorooshian, Leonard Zobler, Norman Bliss, Dan Braithwaite, Randy
- Koster,
- Bruno Rudolf, Udo Schneider, Paul Try.
-
- Snow, Ice and Oceans
- Dudley Foster, David Robinson, Jay Wright, Richard Reynolds, Bob
- Grumbine.
-
- Radiation and Clouds
- Rachel Pinker, Istvan Laszlo, Wayne Darnell, Charles Whitlock, Bruce
- Barkstrom, Ed Harrison, Bill Rossow, Bob Schiffer, Chris Brest, W. F.
- Staylor.
-
- Near-Surface Meteorology
- Tony Hollingsworth, Horst Bottger, Ken Mitchell, Ying Lin.
-
- The organizations who own or sponsored the collation of the data are listed in
- the data documentation and on the cover of the CDs. Special mention goes to
-
- NASA GSFC Branches 923 and 974; NASA GSFC DAAC 902.2;
-
- WCRP-GEWEX elements: GRDC, GPCP, ISCCP; and IGBP-BAHC;
-
- Universities: Maryland, Arizona, Trent, Rutgers;
-
- Scientific Research Centers: NOAA NMC, ECMWF, NASA GISS, NASA LaRC, USAF
- ETAC, EROS Data Center, USGS.
-
- The ISLSCP Steering Committee are warmly thanked for putting up with many
- reviews of the progress of the CDs and for providing valuable guidance to the
- Initiative I team throughout the long process of assembling the data sets.
- The steering committee and invited experts included: Nigel Arnell, Dennis
- Baldocchi, Alan Betts, Josef Cihlar, Ray Desjardins, Robert Dickinson, Chris
- Field, Barry Goodison, Forrest Hall, Chris Justice, Pavel Kabat, Yann Kerr,
- Nobuo Sato, Jerry Melillo, Carlos Nobre, John Norman, Michael Raupach, Steve
- Running, Piers Sellers, Jim Shuttleworth, Soroosh Sorooshian, Jim Wallace;
- (ex-officio) Ichtiaque Rasool, John Townshend, Moustafa Chahine, Jim Dodge,
- Paul Try, Ghassem Asrar, Tony Janetos, Bob Murphy, Bob Schiffer, Mike
- Coughlan, Pierre Morel.
-
- Thanks go to Dawn Erlich for arranging ISLSCP meeting logistics. Last but by
- no means least, thanks go to Laura Blasingame and Valerie McElroy for typing
- and editing this paper.
-
-
-
- ACRONYMS
-
- 4DDA 4-Dimensional Data Assimilation
-
- ASCII American Standard Code for Information Interchange
- AVHRR Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer
-
- BAHC Biospheric Aspects of the Hydrological Cycle (IGBP Core Project)
- BGC Biogeochemistry
-
- CD Compact Disc
- CD-ROM Compact Disc-Read Only Memory
- CSMP Climate Simulation Modeling Project
-
- DAAC Distributed Active Archive Center
- DMA Defense Mapping Agency
-
- ECMWF European Center for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts
- EOS Earth Observing System
- ERBE Earth Radiation Budget Experiment
- ERS-1 European Research Satellite-1
- ESA European Space Agency
-
- FASIR Fourier-Adjusted, Solar Zenith Angle Corrected, Interpolated and
- Reconstructed Data
- FAO Food and Agriculture Organization (UN)
- FGGE First GARP Global Experiment
- FIFE First ISLSCP Field Experiment
- FPAR Fraction of PAR Absorbed by the Vegetation Canopy
-
- GCM General Circulation Model (of the Atmosphere)
- GEWEX Global Energy and Water Cycle Experiment
- GISS Goddard Institute for Space Studies (NASA)
- GOES Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite
- GMT Greenwich Mean Time
- GPCP Global Precipitation Climatology Project
- GRDC Global Runoff Data Center
- GSFC Goddard Space Flight Center (NASA)
-
- HAPEX Hydrology-Atmosphere Pilot Experiment
-
- IGBP International Geosphere-Biosphere Project
- IGBP-DIS IGBP-Data and Information System
- ISCCP International Satellite Cloud Climatology Project
- ISLSCP International Satellite Land Surface Climatology Project
-
- JMA Japanese Meteorological Agency
-
- LAI Leaf Area Index
- LaRC Langley Research Center (NASA)
- LSP Land Surface Parameterization
-
- NASA National Aeronautics and Space Administration
- NCAR National Center for Atmospheric Research
- NDVI Normalized Difference Vegetation Index
- NESDIS NOAA Environmental Satellite Data and Information Service
- NMC National Meteorological Center
- NOAA National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
-
- PAR Photosynthetically Active Radiation
-
- SAR Synthetic Aperture Radar
- SPOT Systeme Probatoire pour L'Observation de la Terre
- SRB Surface Radiation Budget
- SSM/I Special Sensor Microwave Imager
- SST Sea Surface Temperature
-
- TOMS Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer
-
- UN United Nations
- USGS United States Geological Survey
-
- WCRP World Climate Research Program
-
-
- TABLE 1: RECOMMENDATIONS FROM THE 1992 ISLSCP WORKSHOP
-
- Consolidated, Prioritized Data Needs Across the Science Areas:
- Water-Energy-Carbon, Biogeochemistry, Ecological Structure and Function
-
- -----------------------------------------------------------------------------|
- DATA | DOMAIN | RESOLUTION | SOURCE | ACTION |
- | |------------------| | |
- FIELDS | |SPATIAL |TEMPORAL |METHODOLOGY | |
- ------------|--------|--------|---------|------------|-----------------------|
- Vegetation |Regional|50x50 km|Monthly |(1) AVHRR |(1) Use an existing |
- (Cover type,| and | to | |(2) Landsat,|AVHRR product for now. |
- Phenology, | Global | 1x1 km | | SPOT |(2) Support 1x1 km land|
- disturbance,| | | | |surface data set |
- LAI, FPAR, | | | | |effort. |
- etc.) | | | | |(3) Revitalize efforts |
- | | | | |to correct data and |
- | | | | |apply algorithms to |
- | | | | |define biophysical |
- | | | | |parameters. |
- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
- Near-Surface| Global |50x50 km|Diurnal |NMC, ECMWF, |(1) Initiate work to |
- Meteorology | | |cycle, |JMA; |process 4DDA products |
- | | |Monthly |4DDA and |into usable data sets. |
- | | |means |observations| |
- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
- Precipita- | Global |100x100 |Monthly |WCRP - GPCP,|(1) Implement NMC wkshp|
- tion | | km |means |Operational |to analyze surface |
- | | |and |Met. |network data. |
- | | |selected |Agencies; |(2) Check that the abv.|
- | | |days |Surface data|is linked to WCRP-GPCP.|
- | | | |Thermal IR |(3) Provide resources |
- | | | |4DDA |for gridding data if |
- | | | | |necessary. |
- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
- Radiation | Global | 250x250|Diurnal |GOES, |(1) Define interested |
- Fluxes | | km |cycle, |METEOSAT, |communities, dialogue |
- (SW & LW, | | to |Monthly |ERBE, AVHRR,|with ISCCP. |
- incoming & | | 50x50km|means |TOMS; |(2) Check regressions |
- outgoing, | | | |ISCCP, ESA, |using Pathfinder data. |
- PAR | | | |NASA |(3) Validate against |
- incoming) | | | |analyses |long-term data. |
- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
- Soil | Global |100x100 | Once |FAO product |(1) Assign soil physics|
- Physics: | | km | |& supporting|parameters to the FAO |
- Texture, | | to | |material; |soil descriptor fields |
- depth, | | 1x1 km | |New |for now. |
- porosity | | | |initiatives,|(2) Support new |
- Chemistry: | | | |notably IGBP|initiative, and |
- Mineralogy,| | | | |encourage early |
- pH | | | | |deliveries. |
- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
- Topography |Global |10x10 km| Once |USGS, DMA, |(1) Support efforts to |
- | |to 1 km | |ERS-1 |release all data from |
- | |or | | |DMA |
- | |better | | |(2) Check across data |
- | | | | |sets for consistency. |
- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
- Runoff |Regional|Catchmnt| Monthly |Global |(1) Strong encouragemnt|
- | to |grid | |Runoff Data |to GRDC in Germany, |
- | Global |formats | |Center |enlist WMO support. |
- | |50x50 km| |(GRDC) in |(2) Encourage |
- | | | |Germany |continuous updating of |
- | | | | |the data set; gridding |
- | | | | |and averaged products. |
- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
- Snow and Ice|Regional|25x25 km| Monthly |NOAA, NASA, |(1) Apply existing |
- | to | | |Russian, and|techniques. |
- | Global | | |Canadian |(2) Develop and apply |
- | | | |agencies; |improved algorithms and|
- | | | |SSM/I and |international |
- | | | |surface |communications links. |
- | | | |observations|(3) Investigate use of |
- | | | | |SAR. |
- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-
-
- TABLE 2: DATA SETS ON THE CD; TEMPORAL RESOLUTIONS ARE GIVEN IN THE
- RIGHT-HAND COLUMN.
-
- Note: (i) "Monthly 3-hourly" refers to values that are monthly means of
- 3-hourly data. Thus, all the 0000Z values for a month are
- averaged into a single value, also the 0300Z values, etc.
-
- (ii) The snow-free albedo data set in section A is based on NDVI
- fields and a model calculation, the albedo field in section D
- is based on ERBE data, and the fields in section E originate
- from a survey of in-situ work.
-
- (iii) The documentation for the vegetation class data in section A
- includes vegetation morphological and physiological parameters
- associated with each vegetation type in the SiB2 model of
- Sellers et al. (in prep.).
-
- A. VEGETATION: LAND COVER AND BIOPHYSICS
- (NASA/GSFC, CSU, U. Maryland)
-
- NDVI, FASIR-NDVI Monthly
- FPAR, LAI, Greenness Monthly
- Surface roughness, snow-free albedo Monthly
-
- Background (soil/litter) reflectance (Vis, NIR) Fixed
- Vegetation class Fixed
-
- B. HYDROLOGY AND SOILS
- (GPCP, GRDC, U. Arizona, Trent U., NCAR, FAO, NASA/GSFC,
- NASA/GISS)
-
- Precipitation (GPCP) Monthly
- River runoff (GRDC; 14 basins) Monthly
-
- Lake, river, marsh cover percentage Fixed
- Soil texture, depth, slope Fixed
-
- C. SNOW, ICE AND OCEANS
- (NOAA/NESDIS, Rutgers U., USAF, NOAA/NMC, US Navy, NCAR)
-
- Snow cover; depth Monthly
- Sea ice, SST Monthly
-
- Land-ocean boundary Fixed
-
- D. RADIATION AND CLOUDS
- (U. of Maryland, NASA/LaRC, ISCCP, NASA/GISS)
-
- Surface and TOA incoming and outgoing shortwave Monthly 3-hourly
- Surface incoming PAR fluxes Monthly
- Surface incoming shortwave and longwave radiation fluxes Monthly
- Surface net shortwave, net longwave, net radiation fluxes Monthly
- Cloud amount, cloud top pressure, Monthly
- Optical thickness, water path Monthly
- Clear-sky albedo (ERBE) Monthly
-
- E. NEAR-SURFACE METEOROLOGY
- (ECMWF, NASA/GSFC, NOAA/NMC, NASA/LaRC, GPCP)
-
- (i) Prescribed/diagnostic fields
-
- Soil moisture Monthly
- Deep soil temperature and soil wetness Monthly
- Snow depth Monthly
- Albedo, surface roughness Fixed
-
- (ii) Monthly 6-hourly forcing fields
-
- Surface pressure, air temperature, dew point Monthly 6-hourly
- Surface temperature Monthly 6-hourly
- Mean sea level pressure Monthly 6-hourly
- u, v wind speed and stress Monthly 6-hourly
- Surface sensible and latent heat fluxes Monthly 6-hourly
- Net surface and TOA shortwave, longwave fluxes Monthly 6-hourly
-
- (iii) Diurnally-resolved (6-hourly) forcing fields
-
- Surface pressure, air temperature, dew point, wind speed 6-hourly
- Hybrid longwave and shortwave incoming radiation fluxes 6-hourly
- Hybrid total precipitation and convective precipitation 6-hourly
-
-
- TABLE 3. STANDARDIZED DOCUMENTATION FORMAT FOR THE INITIATIVE I DATA SETS
-
- 1. TITLE
- 1.1 Data Set Identification
- 1.2 Data Base Table Name
- 1.3 CD File Name
- 1.4 Revision Date of This Document
-
- 2. INVESTIGATOR(S)
- 2.1 Investigator(s) Name and Title
- 2.2 Title of Investigation
- 2.3 Contacts (for Data Production Information)
- 2.4 Requested Form of Acknowledgment
-
- 3. INTRODUCTION
- 3.1 Objective/Purpose
- 3.2 Summary of Parameters
- 3.3 Discussion
-
- 4. THEORY OF MEASUREMENTS
-
- 5. EQUIPMENT
- 5.1 Instrument Description
- 5.2 Calibration
-
- 6. PROCEDURE
- 6.1 Data Acquisition Methods
- 6.2 Spatial Characteristics
- 6.3 Temporal Characteristics
-
- 7. OBSERVATIONS
- 7.1 Field Notes
-
- 8. DATA DESCRIPTION
- 8.1 Table Definition With Comments
- 8.2 Type of Data (Parameters, Units, Range)
- 8.3 Sample Data Record
- 8.4 Data Format
- 8.5 Related Data Sets
-
- 9. DATA MANIPULATIONS
- 9.1 Formulas
- 9.2 Data Processing Sequence
- 9.3 Calculations
- 9.4 Graphs and Plots
-
- 10. ERRORS
- 10.1 Sources of Error
- 10.2 Quality Assessment
-
- 11. NOTES
- 11.1 Known Problems With the Data
- 11.2 Usage Guidance
- 11.3 Other Relevant Information
-
- 12. REFERENCES
- 12.1 Satellite/Instrument/Data Processing Documentation
- 12.2 Journal Articles and Study Reports
- 12.3 Archive/DBMS Usage Documentation
-
- 13. DATA ACCESS
- 13.1 Contacts for Archive/Data Access Information
- 13.2 Archive Identification
- 13.3 Procedures for Obtaining Data
- 13.4 Archive/Status/Plans
-
- 14. OUTPUT PRODUCTS AND AVAILABILITY
- 14.1 Tape Products
- 14.2 Film Products
- 14.3 Other Products
-
- 15. GLOSSARY OF ACRONYMS
-
-
- FIGURE 1. IMPORTANT INTERACTIONS BETWEEN THE LAND BIOSPHERE AND THE
- ATMOSPHERE WITH RESPECT TO GLOBAL CHANGE**
-
- (A) Influence of changes in the Physical Climate System on biophysical
- processes (Energy-Water-Carbon). These may feed back to the atmosphere
- through changes in energy, heat, water, and carbon dioxide exchange
-
- (B) Changes in nutrient cycling rates; release of carbon dioxide and
- methane from the soil carbon pool back to the atmosphere (Carbon and
- Biogeochemistry).
-
- (C) Changes in biogeochemical processes and water and nutrient availability
- influence ecosystem structure and function.
-
- (D) Change in ecosystem state results in changes in surface biophysical
- characteristics and biogeochemical process rates.
-
- ** This figure is contained in the file named, OVERVIEW.FG1, and is located
- in the same directory as OVERVIEW.TXT. This file is in PICT format and
- can be read by any PICT reader.
-
-
- FIGURE 2. SCHEMATIC SHOWING RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN DIFFERENT KINDS OF
- ATMOSPHERIC AND LAND MODELS.***
-
- The Initiative I data sets are targeted at supplying the forcings,
- fluxes, and surface boundary conditions required to initialize,
- validate, or drive the land models in isolation from the
- atmospheric models. Initiative I should be successful in meeting
- all these requirements except for global-scale mass and heat
- fluxes, for which observations only exist for a few places and
- times; for example, inlarge-scale field experiments.
-
- Note: The "surface boundary conditions" box includes vegetation-dependent
- parameters that are derived from the fraction of photosynthetically
- active radiation absorbed by the green portion of the canopy (FPAR)
- or leaf area index (LAI). These parameters are canopy PAR use
- parameter (p), the roughness length (zO), and the albedo (a).
-
- *** This figure is contained in the file named, OVERVIEW.FG2, and is located
- in the same directory as OVERVIEW.TXT.
-
-
- FIGURE 3. SCHEMATIC SHOWING THE TREATMENTS AND RELATED DATA PROCESSING FLOW
- FOR EACH OF THE DATA SETS#
-
- The data processing flow for each of the data sets is indicated
- by a series of linked arrows each using a different pattern. See
- the legend.
-
- # This figure is contained in the file named, OVERVIEW.FG3, and is located
- in the same directory as OVERVIEW.TXT. This file is in PICT format and
- can be read by any PICT reader.
-