Enhancing Winter Wheat Representation in Noah-MP-Crop for Improved Dynamic Crop Growth Simulation in the North China Plain

Explicitly representing the world's most frequently cultivated winter wheat in land surface model (LSM) is important for understanding carbon and energy cycling over cropland and its interactions with climate, which is crucial for global food security. However, in the latest version of Noah-MP-Crop LSM, winter wheat is significantly underrepresented. This study improved the winter-wheat parameterization in Noah-MP-Crop model by optimizing the phenological scheme, incorporating vernalization process, and calibrating several key parameters associated with winter wheat photosynthesis and carbon allocations. Focusing on the North China Plain as area representative region, model performance in simulating crop dynamic growth, carbon flux, and energy fluxes was validated at both site and regional scales. Results showed that the simulated phenological development matched well with the real-world phenological records. A comparison between the simulated results by the default and developed parameterizations revealed the significant improvements in the reproductions of leaf area index (LAI) and gross primary production (GPP). The determination coefficient (R²) value of GPP was increased from 0.15 to 0.46 to 0.39–0.91. Simulations of energy fluxes showed smaller improvements, with R² values increasing from 0.46 to 0.67 to 0.61–0.84 for latent heat (LE) and 0.18–0.55 to 0.25–0.61 for sensible heat. Additionally, the mean average error of net radiation was reduced. Improvements in spatial and temporal variations of LAI, GPP, and LE in regional simulation were also observed. This work can facilitate incorporating winter wheat cultivation and its interactions with climate system, particularly when coupling the Noah-MP-Crop model with the widely used Weather Research and Forecasting model.