Forecasting the responses of land-atmosphere carbon and water fluxes to spatial and temporal variability in soil moisture stress

Terrestrial ecosystems play a critical role in regulating global carbon and water cycles but, despite global networks’ monitoring land-atmosphere fluxes and the availability of numerous hindcast model-intercomparisons, we have a limited understanding of the timescales of predictability of these fluxes and their dependability on moisture stress. In this forecasting challenge teams submitted half-hourly or daily forecasts of soil moisture, CO2 and water fluxes, at four NEON sites spanning a continental moisture gradient. Each forecast is for a 35 day period submitted monthly in 2021. Here we present an initial comparison of the performances of diverse forecasting approaches employed by participants.