Faithful representation of temporal variations of vegetation in the next generation of C3S reanalyses (ERA6 and beyond) and seasonal forecast and reforecast.

→ Improvements in monitoring and forecasting of temperature and hydrological trends and extremes over land.

Achieved by:

• Collate latest state of the art datasets of Leaf Area Index (LAI) from Copernicus Climate Change Service and Copernicus Global Land Service, to provide a continuous and consistent record of vegetation changes, which can be continued in real time.
• Implement capability in earth system models to ingest these temporal variations.
• Explore the possibility of using the Fraction of green Vegetation Cover (FCOVER) dataset from Copernicus Global Land Services to improve the response of the earth system model to the temporal variations of vegetation (via drag, albedo, evapotranspiration).
• Conduct stand-alone multi – year simulations to evaluate impact and initialize seasonal forecasts using both stand-alone and coupled modelling approaches to assess robustness and uncertainties.
• Evaluate developments in stand-alone simulation by using a variety of land-related observations
• Assess developments in coupled-mode for seasonal forecasts, with focus on representation of trends and extremes.

Addressed in work packages: WP1 and WP3