| 2000: Constructive contrast between modelled and measured climate responses over a regional scale (2008) | |||||||||||||||
Abstract | |||||||||||||||
| Reducing uncertainty in predictions of regionalscale models depends on meaningful contrasts with field measurements. This paper introduces a twostage process that works from the premise that an appropriate goal for regional models is to produce reasonable behavior over dominant environmental gradients. We demonstrate two techniques for contrasting models with data, one based on the shape of modeled relationships (functional contrasts) and the other based on an examination of the residuals (residual contrasts) between the model and an empirically derived surface fit to field data. Functional contrasts evaluated the differences between the response of simulated net primary production (NPP) to climate variables and the response observed in field measurements of NPP. Residual contrasts compared deviations of NPP from the empirical surface to identify groupings (for example, vegetation classes, geographic regions) with model deviations different from those of the field data. In all model– data contrasts, we assigned sample weights to field measurements to ensure unbiased representation of | |||||||||||||||
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