This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Abstract. Simulated land use/land cover change (LULCC) radiative forcings (RF) from changes in surface albedo (Δα) predicted by land surface schemes of six leading climate models were compared to those based on daily MODIS retrievals for three regions in Norway and for three winter–spring seasons. As expected, the magnitude and sign of the albedo biases varied considerably for forests; unexpectedly, however, biases of equal magnitude were evident in predictions at open area sites. The latter were mostly positive and exacerbated the strength of vegetation masking effects and hence the simulated LULCC Δα RF. RF bias was considerably small across models (-0.08 ± 0.04 W m-2; 21 ± 11%); 4 of 6 models had normalized mean absolute errors less than 20% (3-year regional mean). Identifying systematic sources of the albedo prediction biases proved challenging, although for some schemes clear sources were identified. Our study should provide some reassurance that model improvement efforts of recent years are leading to enhanced LULCC climate predictions.

1. Biodiversity is an important component of natural ecosystems, with higher species richness often correlating with an increase in ecosystem productivity. Yet, this relationship varies substantially across environments, typically becoming less pronounced at high levels of species richness. However, species richness alone cannot reflect all important properties of a community, including community evenness, which may mediate the relationship between biodiversity and productivity. If the evenness of a community correlates negatively with richness across forests globally, then a

Publisher's note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

No abstract

No abstract

No abstract

No abstract