The Project for Intercomparison of Land Surface Parameterization Schemes (PILPS): Phases 2 and 3

The World Climate Research Programme Project for Intercomparison of Land Surface Parameterization Schemes (PILPS) is moving into its second and third phases that will exploit observational data and consider the performance of land surface schemes when coupled to their host climate models. The first stage of phase 2 will focus on an attempt to understand the large differences found during phase 1. The first site from which observations will be drawn for phase 2 intercomparisons is Cabauw, the Netherlands (51 °58′N, 4°56′E), selected specifically to try to reduce one of the causes of the divergence among the phase 1 results: the initialization of the deep soil moisture. Cabauw's deep soil is saturated throughout the year. It also offers a quality controlled set of meteorological forcing and 160 days of flux measurements. PILPS phase 2 follows the form of the phase 1 intercomparisons: simple off-line integrations and comparisons, but in phase 2 participating schemes' results will be compared against observed fluxes. Preliminary results indicate that between model variability persists (i) in better specified experiments and (ii) in comparison with data. Although median values are consistent with observations, there is a large range among models. Phase 3, in which the intercomparison of PILPS schemes as a component of global atmospheric circulation models, is being conducted jointly with the Atmospheric Model lntercomparison Project (AMIP) as diagnostic subproject number 12. Preliminary results suggest that results differ by about the same range as in the off-line experiments in phases 1 and 2. Incomplete diagnostics suggest that bucket and canopy models differ and that variability among models can be tracked to the soil moisture parameterization. This paper offers a review of the PILPS project to date and an invitation to participate in PILPS' current and future activities.