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Over the last century, precipitation has shown significant changes, reflecting both natural variability and radiative forcing changes from greenhouse gases and aerosols. Arid and semi-arid ecosystems are particularly sensitive to changes in precipitation regimes. In this study, we investigate how variation in annual total, seasonal distribution and frequency of precipitation affect CO2 fluxes of semi-arid grassland in Inner Mongolia. To this aim, we combine eddy-covariance measurements with a process-based model (ORCHIDEE). First, the ORCHIDEE parameters were optimized using half-hourly CO2 flux data and actual precipitation forcing. Second, the response of CO2 fluxes to altered precipitation scenarios is computed using the model with optimized parameters. Our results show that modeled net primary production (NPP) responds non-linearly to increased vs. decreased rainfall. Re-allocating precipitation from other seasons to spring enhances annual NPP and net ecosystem production (NEP). By contrast, re-allocating more precipitation to autumn was found to decrease annual NPP and NEP. Increasing the frequency of heavy rainfall days (PF10 (mm), days with precipitation more than 10 mm) induces a positive response of simulated NPP during the growing season. However, the increase of the frequency of moderately rainy days (PF5-10 mm, days with precipitation between 5 mm and 10 mm) rather increases soil heterotrophic respiration. Taken together, our modeling results are consistent with that of grassland field manipulation experiments. This study highlights the importance of changes in precipitation seasonality and frequency for semi-arid grassland. Further investigations should focus on testing the ability of models to reproduced manipulation experiment data, and on evaluating the performances of climate models to reproduce rainfall intensity/frequency in semi-arid areas. (c) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.