RUBISCO: Analyzing global carbon and nutrient cycles

The complex nature of Earth System Models (ESMs) drives a need for sophisticated approaches to evaluate, diagnose, and analyze model predictions. In the RUBISCO Scientific Focus Area (SFA) we focus on ESM representations of terrestrial biogeochemical and hydrological processes across spatial (site, regional, continental, and global) and temporal (hourly to centennial) scales. We take advantage of a wide range of observations to develop state and functional-response benchmarks that can be used to infer needed parametric and structural improvements in ESMs and quantify uncertainty bounds on model predictions. We primarily use the E3SM and CESM models for targeted mechanistic inquiry and the CMIP and other model prediction ensembles to perform these analyses.