Benchmark Analysis

Tremendous progress has been achieved in the development of land models and their inclusion to account for land-atmosphere feedbacks in earth system models (ESMs). However, we still have insufficient knowledge on the performance skills of these land models, individually and in comparison to one another. This chapter introduces benchmark analysis, which is a procedure to measure performance of models against a set of defined standards. The benchmark analysis includes: (1) defining targeted aspects of model performance to be evaluated; (2) testing model performance in comparison with a set of benchmarks; (3) measuring model performance skill through quantitative metrics; and (4) evaluating model performance and offering suggestions for future model improvement.