Physical robustness of canopy temperature models for crop heat stress simulation across environments and production conditions

•Climate change is expected to increase heat stress in cereal crops.•Use of canopy temperature accounts for interactions with soil water, VPD and [CO2].•Empirical reference models performed well but requires adequate data.•Robust canopy temperature estimates should account for atmospheric stability.•Canopy temperature simulations requires good simulation of water use. Despite widespread application in studying climate change impacts, most crop models ignore complex interactions among air temperature, crop and soil water status, CO2 concentration and atmospheric conditions that influence crop canopy temperature. The current study extended previous studies by evaluating Tc simulations from nine crop models at six locations across environmental and production conditions. Each crop model implemented one of an empirical (EMP), an energy balance assuming neutral stability (EBN) or an energy balance correcting for atmospheric stability conditions (EBSC) approach to simulate Tc. Model performance in predicting Tc was evaluated for two experiments in continental North America with various water, nitrogen and CO2 treatments. An empirical model fit to one dataset had the best performance, followed by the EBSC models. Stability conditions explained much of the differences between modeling approaches. More accurate simulation of heat stress will likely require use of energy balance approaches that consider atmospheric stability conditions.