Towards uncertainty quantification and parameter estimation for Earth system models in a component-based modeling framework

This paper identifies and then examines the key issues that must be addressed in order to make a component-based modeling framework interoperable with general-purpose packages for model analysis. As a motivating example, one of these packages, DAKOTA, is applied to a representative but nontrivial surface process problem of comparing two models for the longitudinal elevation profile of a river to observational data. Results from a new mathematical analysis of the resulting nonlinear least squares problem are given and then compared to results from several different optimization algorithms in DAKOTA.