Journal article
Evaluation of daily gridded climate products using in situ FLUXNET data and tree growth modeling
Environmental research letters, Vol.21(2), 024023
01/14/2026
DOI: 10.1088/1748-9326/ae384b
Abstract
Gridded climate data products have facilitated research in climate and ecology by providing meteorological data continuously across large spatial scales. However, the sensitivity of scientific outcomes to dataset choice remains poorly understood, and evaluation using station-based records can favor datasets built heavily on weather stations. Here, we evaluate seven high-resolution daily gridded datasets covering the contiguous United States using independent meteorology from the FLUXNET2015 dataset, with a focus on the implications of dataset choice for process-based tree growth modeling. We find that gridded products tend to capture temperature accurately while consistently overestimating the magnitude and frequency of precipitation and its extremes. Moreover, datasets vary in how they define a “day,” which significantly affects temporal alignment with FLUXNET2015 observations. Despite differences among the datasets, the interannual variability in tree ring simulations is insensitive to dataset choice, likely because daily-scale biases are averaged out through accumulated growth across several months. However, inaccuracies in temperature and precipitation can significantly bias modeled xylem cell production, with systematically higher annual precipitation in the gridded datasets leading to greater xylem production compared to simulations using in situ data. Our results suggest that model applications, especially those that integrate to time scales longer than one day, are likely insensitive to climate dataset choice, but applications that are sensitive to daily climate variations or to absolute climate values need to carefully consider biases in gridded climate products.
Details
- Title: Subtitle
- Evaluation of daily gridded climate products using in situ FLUXNET data and tree growth modeling
- Creators
- Feng Wang - University of IowaErika K Wise - University of North Carolina at Chapel HillKevin J. Anchukaitis - University of ArizonaQing Chang - University of IowaMatthew Paul Dannenberg - University of Iowa
- Resource Type
- Journal article
- Publication Details
- Environmental research letters, Vol.21(2), 024023
- DOI
- 10.1088/1748-9326/ae384b
- ISSN
- 1748-9326
- eISSN
- 1748-9326
- Publisher
- IOP
- Grant note
- U.S. National Science Foundation P4CLIMATE program: AGS-2401699, AGS-2401700 U.S. Department of Energy: DE-SC0025361
This project was funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation P4CLIMATE program through Grants AGS-2401699 (EKW) and AGS-2401700 (FW and MPD). QC and MPD acknowledge support from U.S. Department of Energy Grant DE-SC0025361. KJA and FW acknowledge the Agnese N Haury Visiting Scholar Fellowship from the Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research, University of Arizona.
- Language
- English
- Date published
- 01/14/2026
- Academic Unit
- School of Earth, Environment, and Sustainability
- Record Identifier
- 9985130239802771
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