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Optimisation Intercomparison Project (OptIC)

The aim of the OptIC project was to comparatively evaluate several parameter estimation and data assimilation methods for the task of parameterising terrestrial carbon cycle and biogeochemical models from multiple data sources, particularly remotely sensed data.

The approach was through an international intercomparison of data assimilation and parameter estimation methods by applying them to a simple but realistic test problem simulating a terrestrial carbon cycle model and remotely sensed data. The Optic Project was led by Drs Mike Raupach and Peter Rayner, and the Project Scientist was Dr Cathy Trudinger. The project was seeded by the ESA-IGBP-GCP partnership and supported both by ESA and CSIRO Atmospheric Research in Australia.

Cathy M. Trudinger, Michael R. Raupach, Peter J. Rayner, Jens Kattge, Qing Liu,
Bernard Pak, Markus Reichstein, Luigi Renzullo, Andrew D. Richardson, Stephen H. Roxburgh, Julie Styles, Ying Ping Wang, Peter Briggs, Damian Barrett, and Sonja Nikolova. (2007), OptIC project: An intercomparison of optimization techniques for parameter estimation in terrestrial biogeochemical models (pdf, 2.44Mb), J. Geophys. Res., 112, G02027, doi:10.1029/2006JG000367.