Abstract. Moderate resolution satellite sensors including MODIS (Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer) already provide more than 10 yr of observations well suited to describe and understand the dynamics of earth's surface. However, these time series are associated with significant uncertainties and incomplete because of cloud cover. This study compares eight methods designed to improve the continuity by filling gaps and consistency by smoothing the time course. It includes methods exploiting the time series as a whole (iterative caterpillar singular spectrum analysis (ICSSA), empirical mode decomposition (EMD), low pass filtering (LPF) and Whittaker smoother (Whit)) as well as methods working on limited temporal windows of a few weeks to few months (adaptive Savitzky–Golay filter (SGF), temporal smoothing and gap filling (TSGF), and asymmetric Gaussian function (AGF)), in addition to the simple climatological LAI yearly profile (Clim). Methods were applied to the MODIS leaf area index product for the period 2000–2008 and over 25 sites showed a large range of seasonal patterns. Performances were discussed with emphasis on the balance achieved by each method between accuracy and roughness depending on the fraction of missing observations and the length of the gaps. Results demonstrate that the EMD, LPF and AGF methods were failing because of a significant fraction of gaps (more than 20%), while ICSSA, Whit and SGF were always providing estimates for dates with missing data. TSGF (Clim) was able to fill more than 50% of the gaps for sites with more than 60% (80%) fraction of gaps. However, investigation of the accuracy of the reconstructed values shows that it degrades rapidly for sites with more than 20% missing data, particularly for ICSSA, Whit and SGF. In these conditions, TSGF provides the best performances that are significantly better than the simple Clim for gaps shorter than about 100 days. The roughness of the reconstructed temporal profiles shows large differences between the various methods, with a decrease of the roughness with the fraction of missing data, except for ICSSA. TSGF provides the smoothest temporal profiles for sites with a % gap > 30%. Conversely, ICSSA, LPF, Whit, AGF and Clim provide smoother profiles than TSGF for sites with a % gap < 30%. Impact of the accuracy and smoothness of the reconstructed time series were evaluated on the timing of phenological stages. The dates of start, maximum and end of the season are estimated with an accuracy of about 10 days for the sites with a % gap < 10% and increases rapidly with the % gap. TSGF provides more accurate estimates of phenological timing up to a % gap < 60%.

Moderate resolution satellite sensors including MODIS already provide more than 10 yr of observations well suited to describe and understand the dynamics of the Earth surface. However, these time series are incomplete because of cloud cover and associated with significant uncertainties. This study compares eight methods designed to improve the continuity by filling gaps and the consistency by smoothing the time course. It includes methods exploiting the time series as a whole (Iterative caterpillar singular spectrum analysis (ICSSA), empirical mode decomposition (EMD), low pass filtering (LPF) and Whittaker smoother (Whit)) as well as methods working on limited temporal windows of few weeks to few months (Adaptive Savitzky-Golay filter (SGF), temporal smoothing and gap filling (TSGF) and asymmetric Gaussian function (AGF)) in addition to the simple climatological LAI yearly profile (Clim). Methods were applied to MODIS leaf area index product for the period 2000–2008 over 25 sites showing a large range of seasonal patterns. Performances were discussed with emphasis on the balance achieved by each method between accuracy and roughness depending on the fraction of missing observations and the length of the gaps. Results demonstrate that EMD, LPF and AGF methods were failing in case of significant fraction of gaps (%Gap > 20%), while ICSSA, Whit and SGF were always providing estimates for dates with missing data. TSGF (respectively Clim) was able to fill more than 50% of the gaps for sites with more than 60% (resp. 80%) fraction of gaps. However, investigation of the accuracy of the reconstructed values shows that it degrades rapidly for sites with more than 20% missing data, particularly for ICSSA, Whit and SGF. In these conditions, TSGF provides the best performances significantly better than the simple Clim for gaps shorter than about 100 days. The roughness of the reconstructed temporal profiles shows large differences between the several methods, with a decrease of the roughness with the fraction of missing data, except for ICSSA. TSGF provides the smoothest temporal profiles for sites with %Gap > 30%. Conversely, ICSSA, LPF, Whit, AGF and Clim provide smoother profiles than TSGF for sites with %Gap < 30%. Impact of the accuracy and smoothness of the reconstructed time series were evaluated on the timing of phenological stages. The dates of start, maximum and end of the season are estimated with an accuracy of about 10 days for the sites with %Gap < 10% and increases rapidly with %Gap. TSGF provides the more accurate estimates of phenological timing up to %Gap < 60%

Consistent, continuous, and long time series of global biophysical variables derived from satellite data are required for global change research. A novel climatology fitting approach called CACAO (Consistent Adjustment of the Climatology to Actual Observations) is proposed to reduce noise and fill gaps in time series by scaling and shifting the seasonal climatological patterns to the actual observations. The shift and scale CACAO parameters adjusted for each season allow quantifying shifts in the timing of seasonal phenology and inter-annual variations in magnitude as compared to the average climatology. CACAO was assessed first over simulated daily Leaf Area Index (LAI) time series with varying fractions of missing data and noise. Then, performances were analyzed over actual satellite LAI products derived from AVHRR Long-Term Data Record for the 1981-2000 period over the BELMANIP2 globally representative sample of sites. Comparison with two widely used temporal filtering methods-the asymmetric Gaussian (AG) model and the Savitzky-Golay (SG) filter as implemented in TIMESAT-revealed that CACAO achieved better performances for smoothing AVHRR time series characterized by high level of noise and frequent missing observations. The resulting smoothed time series captures well the vegetation dynamics and shows no gaps as compared to the 50-60% of still missing data after AG or SG reconstructions. Results of simulation experiments as well as confrontation with actual AVHRR time series indicate that the proposed CACAO method is more robust to noise and missing data than AG and SG methods for phenology extraction. Index Terms-Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR), climatology fitting, gap filling, inter-annual anomalies, leaf area index (LAI), phenology, temporal smoothing. I. INTRODUCTION L EAF area index (LAI) is recognized as an Essential Climate Variable [44] that plays a key role in a number of processes [12]. Global LAI products are routinely pro-Manuscript

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