A Revised Land Surface Parameterization (SiB2) for Atmospheric GCMS. Part II: The Generation of Global Fields of Terrestrial Biophysical Parameters from Satellite Data

TLDR: In this article, the authors used satellite data to specify the time-varying phonological properties of FPAR, leaf area index, and canopy greenness fraction, and applied corrections to the source NDVI dataset to account for anomalies in the data time series, the effect of variations in solar zenith angle, data dropouts in cold regions where a temperature threshold procedure designed to screen for clouds also eliminated cold land surface points, and persistent cloud cover in the Tropics.

Abstract: The global parameter fields used in the revised Simple Biosphere Model (SiB2) of Sellers et al. are reviewed. The most important innovation over the earlier SiB1 parameter set of Dorman and Sellers is the use of satellite data to specify the time-varying phonological properties of FPAR, leaf area index. and canopy greenness fraction. This was done by processing a monthly 1° by 1° normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) dataset obtained farm Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer red and near-infrared data. Corrections were applied to the source NDVI dataset to account for (i) obvious anomalies in the data time series, (ii) the effect of variations in solar zenith angle, (iii) data dropouts in cold regions where a temperature threshold procedure designed to screen for clouds also eliminated cold land surface points, and (iv) persistent cloud cover in the Tropics. An outline of the procedures for calculating the land surface parameters from the corrected NDVI dataset is given, and a brief d...