We highlight improvements to the International Comprehensive Ocean‐Atmosphere Data Set ( ICOADS ) in the latest Release 3.0 ( R3 .0; covering 1662–2014). ICOADS is the most widely used freely available collection of surface marine observations, providing data for the construction of gridded analyses of sea surface temperature, estimates of air–sea interaction and other meteorological variables. ICOADS observations are assimila...

Release 2.5 of the International Comprehensive Ocean‐Atmosphere Data Set (ICOADS) is a major update (covering 1662–2007) of the world's most extensive surface marine meteorological data collection. Building on extensive national and international partnerships, many new and improved contributing datasets have been processed into a uniform format and combined with the previous Release 2.4. The new data range from early non‐instr...

Evaluating contributions of forest ecosystems to climate change mitigation requires well‐calibrated carbon cycle models with quantified baseline carbon stocks. An appropriate baseline for carbon accounting of natural forests at landscape scales is carbon carrying capacity (CCC); defined as the mass of carbon stored in an ecosystem under prevailing environmental conditions and natural disturbance regimes but excluding anthropog...

Aim To develop a systematic and generic framework for biogeographical regionalizations that can assist in reconciling different approaches and advance their application as a research tool. Location The Australian continent is used as a case study. Methods A review of approaches to biogeographical regionalization revealed two basic methodologies: the integrated survey method and the parametric approach. To help reconcile these...

We present a novel approach to estimating the transpiration flux and gross primary productivity (GPP) from Normalized Difference Vegetation Index, leaf functional types, and readily available climate data. We use this approach to explore the impact of variations in the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere ([CO 2 ]) and consequent predicted changes in vegetation cover, on the transpiration flux and GPP. There was a...

Aim Recent research has shown that much of the variability in leaf gas exchange and leaf longevity can be related to variations in the surface : volume ratio of leaves. The aim of this paper was to develop a theoretical framework and a practical method to extend that result to the vegetation at the continental scale. Location The study was conducted in Australia. Methods We propose that vegetation is composed of a mixture of t...