Earth System Model FGOALS-s2: Coupling a Dynamic Global Vegetation and Terrestrial Carbon Model with the Physical Climate System Model

Earth System Models (ESMs) are fundamental tools for understanding climate-carbon feedback. An ESM version of the Flexible Global Ocean-Atmosphere-Land System model (FGOALS) was recently developed within the IPCC AR5 Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 (CMIP5) modeling framework, and we describe the development of this model through the coupling of a dynamic global vegetation and terrestrial carbon model with FGOALS-s2. The performance of the coupled model is evaluated as follows. The simulated global total terrestrial gross primary production (GPP) is 124.4 PgC yr-1 and net primary production (NPP) is 50.9 PgC yr-1. The entire terrestrial carbon pools contain about 2009.9 PgC, comprising 628.2 PgC and 1381.6 PgC in vegetation and soil pools, respectively. Spatially, in the tropics, the seasonal cycle of NPP and net ecosystem production (NEP) exhibits a dipole mode across the equator due to migration of the monsoon rainbelt, while the seasonal cycle is not so significant in Leaf Area Index (LAI). In the subtropics, especially in the East Asian monsoon region, the seasonal cycle is obvious due to changes in temperature and precipitation from boreal winter to summer. Vegetation productivity in the northern mid-high latitudes is too low, possibly due to low soil moisture there. On the interannual timescale, the terrestrial ecosystem shows a strong response to ENSO. The model-simulated Nio3.4 index and total terrestrial NEP are both characterized by a broad spectral peak in the range of 27 years. Further analysis indicates their correlation coefficient reaches 0.7 when NEP lags the ElNio3.4 index for about 12 months.