‏Process-based crop growth within the land-surface model JULES

The objective of this work is to evaluate the simultaneous interactions at large spatial scales between atmosphere and land surface for natural as well as for managed ecosystems. Therefore first the sensitivity of the used land surface model to morphological and physiological differences between natural vegetation and crops has been investigated by reparameterizing a natural C3 grass into a C3 crop. Next, a dynamic process-based crop growth structure has been built into the land surface model. The simulations carried out with this newly developed model (JULES-SUCROS) have been compared to the original static model. The results highlighted the importance of a dynamic crop growth structure within the land surface model when studying interactions with soil and atmosphere. This might have major implications on the weather and climate systems. Therefore the perspectives are to couple JULES-SUCROS to a GCM, and to carry out similar sensitivity experiments.