Simulation of stable isotopic pools and fluxes by a land-surface scheme forced with observed isotopic ratios in precipitation and atmospheric water vapour.

Stable isotopes provide independent tools for evaluating key components of the hydrological and carbon cycles as simulated by land-surface schemes (LSS). The Project for Intercomparison of Land-surface Parameterisation Schemes (PILPS http://www.pilps.mq.edu.au) is initiating a new type of experiment (IPILPS) to assess the ability of LSSs to reproduce isotopic components of water and mass (carbon) budgets. The project aims to intercompare LSS simulations of diurnal and annual cycles of isotopic pools and fluxes, and to evaluate the performance of isotope-enabled LSSs under varying environmental conditions. The need for evaluation data is driving a new experimental effort concentrating on the measurement of stable water isotopes (SWI), in precipitation, atmospheric and canopy water vapour, soil water and leaf/stem water, on annual and diurnal time scales at three sites in the GEWEX CSE Amazon, Murray-Darling and Baltic Sea basins. We present diurnal and annual cycles of stable isotopes in the ecosystem as simulated by an isotope enabled LSS (ISOLSM)¹ over an agricultural pasture in Wagga Wagga (SE Australia). Climatological values of SWI in precipitation and water vapour, as well as continuous in situ D/H ratios of atmospheric water vapour obtained during a three-week field campaign, are used to force the LSS. The D/H ratio was measured using a fully automated and mobile Fourier Transform Infrared (FTIR)² spectrometer. The sensitivity of simulated isotopes (in soil water, plants and canopy air space, as well as isotopic exchanges between the land surface and the atmosphere) to the atmospheric forcing is analysed. The results highlight the importance of intensive field campaigns for measuring SWI in the environment as both forcing and evaluation data for land surface simulations. 1. A. Henderson-Sellers et al., 2004, Using stable water isotopes to evaluate basin-scale simulations of surface water budgets, in press, J. Hydrometeorol. 2. D.W.T. Griffith et al., 2002, Air-Land exchanges of CO2, CH4 and N2O measured by FTIR spectrometry and micrometeorological techniques, Atmos. Environ., 36, 1833-42.