Gas exchange analysers exhibit large measurement error driven by internal thermal gradients

Portable gas exchange analysers provide critical data for understanding plant-atmosphere carbon and water fluxes, and for parameterising Earth system models that forecast climate change effects and feedbacks. We characterised temperature measurement errors in the Li-Cor LI-6400XT and LI-6800, and estimated downstream errors in derived quantities, including stomatal conductance (g_sw ) and leaf intercellular CO₂ concentration (C_i ). The LI-6400XT exhibited air temperature errors (differences between reported air temperature and air temperature measured near the leaf) up to 7.2°C, leaf temperature errors up to 5.3°C, and relative errors in g_sw and C_i that increased as temperatures departed from ambient. This caused errors in leaf-to-air temperature relationships, assimilation-temperature curves and CO₂ response curves. Temperature dependencies of maximum Rubisco carboxylation rate (V_cmax ) and maximum RuBP regeneration rate (J_max ) showed errors of 12% and 35%, respectively. These errors are likely to be idiosyncratic and may differ among machines and environmental conditions. The LI-6800 exhibited much smaller errors. Earth system model predictions may be erroneous, as much of their parametrisation data were measured on the LI-6400XT system, depending on the methods used. We make recommendations for minimising errors and correcting data in the LI-6400XT. We also recommend transitioning to the LI-6800 for future data collection.