Emergent patterns in both models and observations repeatedly hint at simpler aggregate responses within the complexity of the terrestrial carbon cycle; knowledge of these can accelerate our capacity to advance understanding of the terrestrial biosphere and to eliminate plausible but inaccurate representations. We are entering an era of high dimensional and increasingly informative Earth observations with more power to inform models, but the power of these new observations is just being tapped. This session will focus on the identification of modes and function emerging from terrestrial ecosystem carbon models and observations, with the aim to advance fundamental understanding of terrestrial carbon cycling. We welcome submissions highlighting recent progress on a range of themes spanning from emergent behavior in biospheric process models, model emulation and optimal model complexity theory to corresponding emergent patterns in satellite and aircraft observations, in-situ measurements, global in-situ datasets and terrestrial carbon cycle model-data fusion analyses.