Constraining the carbon cycle in JULES-ES-1.0

Abstract

Land surface models are an important tool in the study of climate change and its impacts, but their use can be hampered by uncertainties in input parameter settings and by errors in the models. We apply uncertainty quantification (UQ) techniques to constrain the input parameter space and corresponding historical simulations of JULES-ES-1.0 (Joint UK Land Environment Simulator Earth System), the land surface component of the UK Earth System Model, UKESM1.0. We use an ensemble of historical simulations of the land surface model to rule out ensemble members and corresponding input parameter settings that do not match modern observations of the land surface and carbon cycle. As JULES-ES-1.0 is computationally expensive, we use a cheap statistical proxy termed an emulator, trained on the ensemble of model runs, to rule out parts of the parameter space where the simulator has not yet been run. We use history matching, an iterated approach to constraining JULES-ES-1.0, running an initial ensemble and training the emulator, before choosing a second wave of ensemble members consistent with historical land surface observations. We successfully rule out 88% of the initial input parameter space as being statistically inconsistent with observed land surface behaviour. The result is a set of historical simulations and a constrained input space that are statistically consistent with observations. Furthermore, we use sensitivity analysis to identify the most (and least) important input parameters for controlling the global output of JULES-ES-1.0 and provide information on how parameters might be varied to improve the performance of the model and eliminate model biases.