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Global ecosystem models lack an explicit representation of budburst and senescence for evergreen conifers despite their primordial role in the carbon cycle. In this study we evaluated eight different budburst models, combining forcing, chilling and photoperiod, for their ability to describe spring budburst, and one model of needle senescence for temperate evergreen coniferous forests. The models' parameters were optimized against field observations from a national forest monitoring network in France. The best fitting budburst model was determined according to a new metrics which accounts for both temporal and spatial variabilities of budburst events across sites. The best model could reproduce observed budburst dates both at the site scale ( +/- 5 days) and at regional scale ( +/- 12 days). We also showed that the budburst models parameterized at site scale lose some predictive capability when applied at coarser spatial resolution, e.g., in grid-based simulations. The selected budburst model was then coupled to a senescence function defined from needle survivorship observations in order to describe the full phenology cycle of coniferous forests. Implemented in the process-driven ecosystem model ORCHIDEE, this new conifer phenology module represented accurately the intra and inter-annual dynamics of leaf area index at both the local and regional scales when compared against MODIS remote sensing observations. A sensitivity analysis showed only a small impact of the new budburst model on the timing of the seasonal cycle of photosynthesis (GPP). Yet, due to the faster renewal of needles compared to the standard version of ORCHIDEE, we simulated an increase in the GPP by on average 15% over France, while the simulated needle turnover was doubled. Compared to 1970-2000, projections indicated an advancement of the budburst date of 10.3 +/- 2.8 and 12.3 +/- 4.1 days in average over the period 2060-2100 with the best forcing and chilling-forcing models respectively. Our study suggests that including an explicit simulation of needle budburst and senescence for evergreen conifers in global terrestrial ecosystem models may significantly impact future projections of carbon budgets.