Articles | Volume 25, issue 1
https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-25-447-2021
https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-25-447-2021
Research article
 | 
28 Jan 2021
Research article |  | 28 Jan 2021

Evaluating a land surface model at a water-limited site: implications for land surface contributions to droughts and heatwaves

Mengyuan Mu, Martin G. De Kauwe, Anna M. Ukkola, Andy J. Pitman, Teresa E. Gimeno, Belinda E. Medlyn, Dani Or, Jinyan Yang, and David S. Ellsworth

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Short summary
Land surface model (LSM) is a critical tool to study land responses to droughts and heatwaves, but lacking comprehensive observations limited past model evaluations. Here we use a novel dataset at a water-limited site, evaluate a typical LSM with a range of competing model hypotheses widely used in LSMs and identify marked uncertainty due to the differing process assumptions. We show the extensive observations constrain model processes and allow better simulated land responses to these extremes.