Energy-conservation datasets of global land surface radiation and heat fluxes from 2000–2020 generated by CoSEB

Abstract

Abstract. Accurately estimating global land surface radiation [including downward shortwave radiation (SWIN), downward longwave radiation (LWIN), upward shortwave radiation (SWOUT), upward longwave radiation (LWOUT) and net radiation (Rn)] and heat fluxes [including latent heat flux (LE), soil heat flux (G) and sensible heat flux (H)] is essential for quantifying the exchange of radiation, heat and water between the land and atmosphere under global climate change. This study presents the first data-driven energy-conservation datasets of global land surface radiation and heat fluxes from 2000 to 2020, generated by our model of Coordinated estimates of land Surface Energy Balance components (CoSEB). The model integrates GLASS and MODIS remote sensing data, ERA5-Land reanalysis datasets, topographic data, CO2 concentration data as independent variables and in situ radiation and heat flux observations at 258 eddy covariance sites worldwide as dependent variables within a multivariate random forest technique to effectively learn the physics of energy conservation. The developed CoSEB-based datasets are strikingly advantageous in that [1] they are the first data-driven global datasets that satisfy both surface radiation balance and heat balance among the eight fluxes, as demonstrated by both the radiation imbalance ratio [RIR, defined as 100%×(SWIN-SWOUT+LWIN-LWOUT-Rn)/Rn] and energy imbalance ratio [EIR, defined as 100%×(Rn-G-LE-H)/Rn] of 0, [2] the radiation and heat fluxes are characterized by high accuracies, where (1) the RMSEs (R2) for daily estimates of SWIN, SWOUT, LWIN, LWOUT, Rn, LE, H and G from the CoSEB-based datasets at 44 independent test sites were 37.52 W m−2 (0.81), 14.20 W m−2 (0.42), 22.47 W m−2 (0.90), 13.78 W m−2 (0.95), 29.66 W m−2 (0.77), 30.87 W m−2 (0.60), 29.75 W m−2 (0.44) and 5.69 W m−2 (0.44), respectively, (2) the CoSEB-based datasets, in comparison to the mainstream products/datasets (i.e. GLASS, BESS-Rad, BESSV2.0, FLUXCOM, MOD16A2, PML_V2 and ETMonitor) that generally separately estimated subsets of the eight flux components, better agreed with the in situ observations. Our developed datasets hold significant potential for application across diverse fields such as agriculture, forestry, hydrology, meteorology, ecology, and environmental science, which can facilitate comprehensive studies on the variability, impacts, responses, adaptation strategies, and mitigation measures of global and regional land surface radiation and heat fluxes under the influences of climate change and human activities. The CoSEB-based datasets are open access and available through the National Tibetan Plateau Data Center (TPDC) at https://doi.org/10.11888/Terre.tpdc.302559 (Tang et al., 2025a) and through the Science Data Bank (ScienceDB) at https://doi.org/10.57760/sciencedb.27228 (Tang et al., 2025b).