A Global Climatology of Albedo, Roughness Length and Stomatal Resistance for Atmospheric General Circulation Models as Represented by the Simple Biosphere Model (SiB)

Abstract Components of the Simple Biosphere Model (SiB) of Sellers et al. were used to generate global monthly fields of surface albedo (0.4–4.0 μm), roughness length and minimum surface (stomatal) resistance. SiB consists of three submodels which describe the roles of radiative transfer, turbulent transfer and surface resistance in determining the energy balance of the vegetated land surface. These three submodels were detached from SiB and used on the SiB parameter set (total and green leaf area index, leaf angle orientation, canopy dimensions, etc.) to calculate global monthly fields of albedo, roughness length and minimum stomatal resistance at 1° × 1° resolution. Time series of various parameters are also displayed for each vegetation type for specified grid points. The SiB results compare reasonably well with appropriate measurements obtained from the literature and have the additional merit of being mutually consistent; the three submodels use many common parameters, which ensures that, for each gr...