## 3 Results
### Intercomparison between UTOPIA and NOAH Simulations Initialized with GLDAS  
The intercomparison between the two land surface models UTOPIA and NOAH has been performed in the experiments EXP2b and EXP3b for UTOPIA, and EXP4 and EXP5 for NOAH. The only vegetation type considered here was 'irrigated crop', and the analyzed period time was three years because the comparison involved only simulated data and not field observations. Note that UTOPIA and NOAH have been driven by the same dataset in each experiment, thus eventual differences can be attributed to the respective model parameterizations.  
In all experiments, the RNET mean values simulated by UTOPIA were lower than those of NOAH. All initial and boundary conditions being equal for the models, the difference can be attributed to the soil surface temperature, larger for UTOPIA, which means a larger infrared upward flux and then a lower net radiation.  
The comparison of SHF and LHF mean values did not show a definite conclusion, because values vary with experiment and location not uniformly. The heat fluxes from NOAH model have been analyzed and compared with products of different land-surface models, reanalysis and satellite-based products [41]. Noah model latent heat flux correlates well with CLM and Mosaic model fluxes regarding the monthly means. Regarding the annual means of LHF, SHF and RNET, the NOAH model had values similar to the CLM model.  
The analysis of soil temperatures shows that mean values simulated by the UTOPIA model were larger than those of the NOAH model in all experiments, and minima and maxima were also larger. The reason can be, being that the boundary conditions were the same for both models, a different parameterization of the processes involved in the calculation of different soil layers temperatures, or an imprecision in the determination of the energy budget, which influences the soil heat flux and hence the soil temperature. At this purpose, we can remember that the UTOPIA model consider nine soil layers, whereas the NOAH model only considers four, and that UTOPIA parameterizes the soil freezing.  
Also, the results of volumetric water content simulations did not show a clear behavior: mean values were very different, depending on site and experiment, except for the FB station, where mean values were coincident (but ranges were very different). The largest differences between the two models were in the extremes: minima were lower for NOAH and maxima were higher for UTOPIA, while mean values did not show a unique behavior. These differences could have some impacts in the evaluation of photosynthetic processes, vegetation resistance, hydrological budget, and carbon assimilation. Unfortunately, this study is unable to give a definite answer about which model gives the best performance about this variable, nor justify why this behavior is present, perhaps further observations are required. We can just remember here that GLDAS databases overestimate the precipitation in all sites, and that VWC minima of UTOPIA over vineyards were overestimated (but not the corresponding maxima), perhaps due to the presence of some grasses within the vineyards, not considered by the model.