GSWP-2
The Second Global Soil Wetness Project (GSWP-2):
Multi-Model Analysis and Implications for our Perception of the Land Surface
Paul Dirmeyer, Xiang Gao, Mei Zhao and Zhichang Guo
Center for Ocean-Land-Atmosphere Studies, Calverton, Maryland, USA
Taikan Oki and Naota Hanasaki
Institute for Industrial Science, University of Tokyo, Japan
May 2005
COLA Technical Report No. 185
Submitted to: Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society
ABSTRACT
The Second Global Soil Wetness Project (GSWP-2) is an initiative to compare
and evaluate 10-year simulations by a broad range of land surface models under controlled conditions.
A major product of GSWP-2 is a global gridded multi-model analysis of land surface state variables
and fluxes. Simulations by 13 land models from five nations have gone into producing the analysis.
The models are driven by forcing data derived from a combination of gridded atmospheric reanalyses
and observations. The resulting analysis includes multi-model means and standard deviations on the
monthly time scale, as well as daily profiles of soil moisture and temperature at six levels. The
standard deviations provide a measure of model agreement that may be used as a quality metric. An
overview of key characteristics of the analysis is presented here, along with information on
obtaining data.
(AMS Copyright notice)