JULES
Purpose
The Joint UK Land Environment Simulator (JULES) is a process-based model that simulates the fluxes of carbon, water, energy and momentum between the land surface and the atmosphere.
Brief Description
JULES has a tiled model of sub-grid heterogeneity with separate surface temperatures, short-wave and long-wave radiative fluxes, sensible and latent heat fluxes, ground heat fluxes, canopy moisture contents, snow masses and snow melt rates computed for each surface type in a grid-box. Nine surface types are normally used: five Plant Functional Types (PFTs) - broadleaf trees, needleleaf trees, C3 (temperate) grass, C4 (tropical) grass and shrubs - and four non-vegetation types - urban, inland water, bare soil and land-ice. Except for those classified as land-ice, a land grid-box can be made up from any mixture of the other surface types. Fractions of surface types within each land-surface grid-box are read from an ancillary file or modelled by TRIFFID. Air temperature, humidity and wind-speed above the surface and soil temperatures and moisture contents below the surface are treated as homogeneous across a grid-box.
Availability and documentation
The model is freely available upon acceptance of the terms of conditions.
References
- Clark, D. B., Mercado, L. M., Sitch, S., Jones, C. D., Gedney, N., Best, M. J., Pryor, M., Rooney, G. G., Essery, R. L. H., Blyth, E., Boucher, O., Harding, R. J., and Cox, P. M. (2011). The Joint UK Land Environment Simulator (JULES), Model description – Part 2: Carbon fluxes and vegetation Geoscientific Model Development 4: 641–688 doi:10.5194/gmdd-4-641-2011.
- Best, M. J., Pryor, M., Clark, D. B., Rooney, G. G., Essery, R .L. H., Ménard, C. B., Edwards, J. M., Hendry, M. A., Porson, A., Gedney, N., Mercado, L. M., Sitch, S., Blyth, E., Boucher, O., Cox, P. M., Grimmond, C. S. B., and Harding, R. J. (2011). The Joint UK Land Environment Simulator (JULES), model description – Part 1: Energy and water fluxes Geoscientific Model Development 4: 677-699 doi:10.5194/gmd-4-677-2011.