There were systematic differences in performance among the fluxes, with the following ascending order: net ecosystem exchange (R 2 < 0.5), ecosystem respiration (R 2 > 0.6), gross primary production (R 2 > 0.7), latent heat (R 2 > 0.7), sensible heat (R 2 > 0.7), and net radiation (R 2 > 0.8). The ML methods predicted the across-site variability and the mean seasonal cycle of the observed fluxes very well (R 2 > 0.7), while the 8-day deviations from the mean seasonal cycle were not well predicted (R 2 < 0.5). Fluxes were better predicted at forested and temperate climate sites than at sites in extreme climates or less represented by training data (e.g., the tropics). The evaluated large ensemble of ML-based models will be the basis of new global flux products.Published by Copernicus Publications on behalf of the European Geosciences Union.

Abstract. Extreme climatic events, such as droughts and heat stress, induce anomalies in ecosystem–atmosphere CO2 fluxes, such as gross primary production (GPP) and ecosystem respiration (Reco), and, hence, can change the net ecosystem carbon balance. However, despite our increasing understanding of the underlying mechanisms, the magnitudes of the impacts of different types of extremes on GPP and Reco within and between ecosystems remain poorly predicted. Here we aim to identify the major factors controlling the amplitude of extreme-event impacts on GPP, Reco, and the resulting net ecosystem production (NEP). We focus on the impacts of heat and drought and their combination. We identified hydrometeorological extreme events in consistently downscaled water availability and temperature measurements over a 30-year time period. We then used FLUXNET eddy covariance flux measurements to estimate the CO2 flux anomalies during these extreme events across dominant vegetation types and climate zones. Overall, our results indicate that short-term heat extremes increased respiration more strongly than they downregulated GPP, resulting in a moderate reduction in the ecosystem's carbon sink potential. In the absence of heat stress, droughts tended to have smaller and similarly dampening effects on both GPP and Reco and, hence, often resulted in neutral NEP responses. The combination of drought and heat typically led to a strong decrease in GPP, whereas heat and drought impacts on respiration partially offset each other. Taken together, compound heat and drought events led to the strongest C sink reduction compared to any single-factor extreme. A key insight of this paper, however, is that duration matters most: for heat stress during droughts, the magnitude of impacts systematically increased with duration, whereas under heat stress without drought, the response of Reco over time turned from an initial increase to a downregulation after about 2 weeks. This confirms earlier theories that not only the magnitude but also the duration of an extreme event determines its impact. Our study corroborates the results of several local site-level case studies but as a novelty generalizes these findings on the global scale. Specifically, we find that the different response functions of the two antipodal land–atmosphere fluxes GPP and Reco can also result in increasing NEP during certain extreme conditions. Apparently counterintuitive findings of this kind bear great potential for scrutinizing the mechanisms implemented in state-of-the-art terrestrial biosphere models and provide a benchmark for future model development and testing.

Light use efficiency (LUE) models are widely used to simulate gross primary production (GPP).However, the treatment of the plant canopy as a big leaf by these models can introduce large uncertainties in simulated GPP. Recently, a two-leaf light use efficiency (TL-LUE) model was developed to simulate GPP separately for sunlit and shaded leaves and has been shown to outperform the big-leaf MOD17 model at six FLUX sites in China. In this study we investigated the performance of the TL-LUE model for a wider range of biomes. For this we optimized the parameters and tested the TL-LUE model using data from 98 FLUXNET sites which are distributed across the globe. The results showed that the TL-LUE model performed in general better than the MOD17 model in simulating 8 day GPP. Optimized maximum light use efficiency of shaded leaves (ε msh ) was 2.63 to 4.59 times that of sunlit leaves (ε msu ). Generally, the relationships of ε msh and ε msu with ε max ZHOU ET AL. were well described by linear equations, indicating the existence of general patterns across biomes. GPP simulated by the TL-LUE model was much less sensitive to biases in the photosynthetically active radiation (PAR) input than the MOD17 model. The results of this study suggest that the proposed TL-LUE model has the potential for simulating regional and global GPP of terrestrial ecosystems, and it is more robust with regard to usual biases in input data than existing approaches which neglect the bimodal within-canopy distribution of PAR.

Abstract. Peatlands store substantial amounts of carbon and are vulnerable to climate change. We present a modified version of the Organising Carbon and Hydrology In Dynamic Ecosystems (ORCHIDEE) land surface model for simulating the hydrology, surface energy, and CO 2 fluxes of peatlands on daily to annual timescales. The model includes a separate soil tile in each 0.5 • grid cell, defined from a global peatland map and identified with peat-specific soil hydraulic properties. Runoff from non-peat vegetation within a grid cell containing a fraction of peat is routed to this peat soil tile, which maintains shallow water tables. The water table position separates oxic from anoxic decomposition. The model was evaluated against eddy-covariance (EC) observations from 30 northern peatland sites, with the maximum rate of carboxylation (V cmax ) being optimized at each site. Regarding short-term day-to-day variations, the model performance was good for gross primary production (GPP) (r 2 = 0.76; NashSutcliffe modeling efficiency, MEF = 0.76) and ecosystem respiration (ER, r 2 = 0.78, MEF = 0.75), with lesser accuracy for latent heat fluxes (LE, r 2 = 0.42, MEF = 0.14) and and net ecosystem CO 2 exchange (NEE, r 2 = 0.38, MEF = 0.26). Seasonal variations in GPP, ER, NEE, and energy fluxes on monthly scales showed moderate to high r 2 values (0.57-0.86). For spatial across-site gradients of annual mean GPP, ER, NEE, and LE, r 2 values of 0.93, 0.89, 0.27, and 0.71 were achieved, respectively. Water table (WT) variation was not well predicted (r 2 < 0.1), likely due to the uncertain water input to the peat from surrounding areas. However, the poor performance of WT simulation did not greatly affect predictions of ER and NEE. We found a significant relationship between optimized V cmax and latitude (temperature), which better reflects the spatial gradients of annual NEE than using an average V cmax value.

Abstract. The mean rate of dissipation of turbulent kinetic energy is related to the surface fluxes of momentum and heat through the turbulent kinetic energy budget equation. This relationship may be used to estimate surface fluxes from measurements of the dissipation rates. The success of recent applications of the approach has been limited by uncertainties surrounding the functional relationship between the dimensionless dissipation rates and the atmospheric stability parameter. A pair of field experiments was designed and carried out in the atmospheric surface layer to identify this functional relationship over a broad range of neutral and convective flows, covering greater than 3 orders of magnitude in the stability parameter. Mean dissipation rates were computed using Fourier power spectra, second-order structure functions, and third-order structure functions. Arguments are presented for the superiority of the third-order approach. A threesublayer conceptual model is invoked to guide the dimensional analysis, and the resulting dissipation rates are shown to scale uniquely in the three sublayers. Near the wall, in the dynamic sublayer, dissipation is significantly less than production, as energy is transported up to the more convective regions, where an equality between dissipation and production is achieved.