Multimodel Estimate of the Global Terrestrial Water Balance: Setup and First Results

Abstract Six land surface models and five global hydrological models participate in a model intercomparison project [Water Model Intercomparison Project (WaterMIP)], which for the first time compares simulation results of these different classes of models in a consistent way. In this paper, the simulation setup is described and aspects of the multimodel global terrestrial water balance are presented. All models were run at 0.5° spatial resolution for the global land areas for a 15-yr period (1985–99) using a newly developed global meteorological dataset. Simulated global terrestrial evapotranspiration, excluding Greenland and Antarctica, ranges from 415 to 586 mm yr −1 (from 60 000 to 85 000 km 3 yr −1 ), and…

• DF
  Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, UK Government

  Award: GA01101
• SR
  Sight Research UK

  Awards: NE/E00184X/1, NE/E001866/1, NE/E001858/1, NE/E001831/1, NE/E001890/1, NE/E001874/1, NE/E001823/1, NE/E001904/1, NE/E001815/1, NE/E001858/2, NE/E001882/1
• EC
  European Commission

  Award: 036946
• NE
  Natural Environment Research Council

  Awards: NE/E001866/1, NE/E001904/1, NE/E001815/1, NE/E001823/1, NE/E001882/1, NE/E001890/1, NE/E001831/1, NE/E001858/2, NE/E001874/1, NE/E00184X/1, NE/E001858/1
• WU
  Wageningen University and Research