Coupling a land-surface model with a crop growth model to improve ET flux estimations in the Upper Ganges basin, India

Land-Surface Models (LSMs) are tools that represent energy and water flux exchanges between land and the atmosphere. Although much progress has been made in adding detailed physical processes into these models, there is much room left for improved estimates of evapotranspiration fluxes, by including a more reasonable and accurate representation of crop dynamics. Recent studies suggest a strong land-surface–atmosphere coupling over India and since this is one of the most intensively cultivated areas in the world, the strong impact of crops on the evaporative flux cannot be neglected. In this study we dynamically couple the LSM JULES with the crop growth model InfoCrop. JULES in its current version (v3.4) does not simulate crop growth. Instead, it treats crops as natural grass, while using prescribed vegetation parameters. Such simplification might lead to modelling errors. Therefore we developed a coupled modelling scheme that simulates dynamically crop development and parametrized it for the two main crops of the study area, wheat and rice. This setup is used to examine the impact of inter-seasonal land cover changes in evapotranspiration fluxes of the Upper Ganges River basin (India). The sensitivity of JULES with regard to the dynamics of the vegetation cover is evaluated. Our results show that the model is sensitive to the changes introduced after coupling it with the crop model. Evapotranspiration fluxes, which are significantly different between the original and the coupled model, are giving an approximation of the magnitude of error to be expected in LSMs that do not include dynamic crop growth. For the wet season, in the original model, the monthly Mean Error ranges from 7.5 to 24.4 mm month−1, depending on different precipitation forcing. For the same season, in the coupled model, the monthly Mean Error's range is reduced to 5.4–11.6 mm month−1. For the dry season, in the original model, the monthly Mean Error ranges from 10 to 17 mm month−1, depending on different precipitation forcing. For the same season, in the coupled model, the monthly Mean Error's range is reduced to 2.2–3.4 mm month−1. The new modelling scheme, by offering increased accuracy of evapotranspiration estimations, is an important step towards a better understanding of the two-way crops–atmosphere interactions