Evaluation of Three Long Time Series for Global Fraction of Absorbed Photosynthetically Active Radiation (FAPAR) Products

The fraction of absorbed photosynthetically active radiation (FAPAR) is a critical input parameter in many climate and ecological models. Long time series of global FAPAR products are required for many applications, such as vegetation productivity, carbon budget calculations, and global change studies. Three long time series of global FAPAR products have been existing since the 1980s: Global LAnd Surface Satellite (GLASS) Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR), National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) AVHRR, and third-generation Global Inventory Monitoring and Modeling System (GIMMS3g). Currently, no intercomparison studies exist that have evaluated these FAPAR products to understand their differences for effective applications. In this paper, these three long time series of global FAPAR products are first intercompared to evaluate their spatial and temporal consistencies, and then compared with FAPAR values derived from high-resolution reference maps of VAlidation of Land European Remote sensing Instruments sites. Our results demonstrate that the GLASS AVHRR FAPAR product is spatially complete, whereas the NCEI AVHRR and GIMMS3g FAPAR products contain many missing pixels, especially in rainforest regions and in middle- and high-latitude zones of the Northern Hemisphere. The GLASS AVHRR, NCEI AVHRR, and GIMMS3g FAPAR products are generally consistent in their spatial patterns. However, a relatively large discrepancy among these FAPAR products is observed in tropical forest regions and around 55°N–65°N. In latitudes between 15°N and 25°N, the mean GIMMS3g FAPAR values are clearly larger than the mean GLASS AVHRR and NCEI AVHRR FAPAR values during July–October each year. The GLASS AVHRR FAPAR product provides smooth FAPAR temporal profiles, whereas the NCEI AVHRR and GIMMS3g FAPAR products showed fluctuating trajectories, especially during the growing seasons. All three FAPAR products show high agreement coefficients (ACs) in vegetation regions with obvious seasonal variations and low ACs in tropical forest regions and sparsely vegetated areas. A comparison of these FAPAR products with the FAPAR values derived from high-resolution reference maps demonstrates that the GLASS AVHRR FAPAR product has the best performance [root mean square deviation (RMSD) = 0.0819 and bias = 0.0043], followed by the NCEI AVHRR FAPAR product (RMSD = 0.1061 and bias = 0.0371), and then finally, the GIMMS3g FAPAR product (RMSD = 0.1152 and bias = 0.0248).