“…For offline simulations, the model requires downward short-wave and long-wave radiation (W m −2 ), rainfall and snowfall rate (kg m −2 s −1 ), air temperature (K), wind speed (m s −1 ), surface pressure (Pa) and specific humidity (kg kg −1 ) ( Table 1). Gap-filled meteorological forcing data at the local scale was obtained from the FLUXNET network and data at the global scale was obtained from two gridded data sets: WFDEI (Weedon et al, 2014(Weedon et al, , 2011 and that developed by Sheffield et al (2006) There are several global LAI data sets available, such as ECOCLIMAP (1992) (Masson et al, 2003), CYCLOPES (1997CYCLOPES ( -2007 (Baret et al, 2007), GLOBCARBON (1998GLOBCARBON ( -2003 (Deng et al, 2006), MOD15 (2000-present) (Yang et al, 2006) and MISR LAI (2000-present) (Diner et al, 2008;Hu et al, 2007). For the majority of sites used in this study, gap-filled meteorological data and GPP flux observations are only available for the 2000s and therefore, a global data set of satellite LAI was required that covered this period.…”