Intercomparison of Landsurface process models in arid and semi-arid climate

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For better prediction of future climate at Asian dryland, a numerous landsurface process models were intercompared each other using observation at Asian dryland as forcing drivers. These models are subprograms of climate models to reproduce water, energy and vegetation processes at landsurface, and in this project they are used independently, i.e. “off-line”, of climate models. Two sites at Asian dryland were selected as target sites. The data needed to drive the models were archived, and information on soil and vegetation were collected: One of the finest data set in Asian dryland was constructed. Then, these data were used to drive 11 state-of-the-art numerical models of landsurface processes. The outputs generated by these models were also archived, and they were subject to mutual comparison. This way of comparison is called model intercomparison, and shed a light into differences in reproducibility of landsurface processes caused by different coding between the models. This gave an insight into current status of modeling skills of landsurface processes at Asian dryland.This study constitute a Japanese part of the international project called ADMIP (Asian Dryland Model Intercomparison Project), and was conducted in close link with ADMIP.