The Sensitivity of Land Surface Model Simulations to the NCEP/NCAR, ERA-15, and Bias Reduced Forcing Datasets
Aaron A. Berg, James S. Famiglietti, Jeffrey P. Walker and Paul R. Houser
Forcing for a Catchment-based Land Surface Model (CLSM) was produced from the National Center for Environmental Prediction/National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCEP/NCAR) reanalysis, from the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) 15-year reanalysis (ERA-15), and from merging global observation fields with the reanalysis products. The LSM was then forced with each of the three forcing datasets for the North American continent. Simulated water balances are compared to observations for a number of river basins across the continent. These results demonstrate the sensitivity of water balance simulations to reanalysis bias correction.