Climate change is likely to profoundly modulate the burden of infectious diseases. However, attributing health impacts to a changing climate requires being able to associate changes in infectious ...disease incidence with the potentially complex influences of climate. This aim is further complicated by nonlinear feedbacks inherent in the dynamics of many infections, driven by the processes of immunity and transmission. Here, we detail the mechanisms by which climate drivers can shape infectious disease incidence, from direct effects on vector life history to indirect effects on human susceptibility, and detail the scope of variation available with which to probe these mechanisms. We review approaches used to evaluate and quantify associations between climate and infectious disease incidence, discuss the array of data available to tackle this question, and detail remaining challenges in understanding the implications of climate change for infectious disease incidence. We point to areas where synthesis between approaches used in climate science and infectious disease biology provide potential for progress.
Recent research highlights the role of land surface processes in heat waves, droughts, and other extreme events. Here we use an earth system model (ESM) from the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory ...(GFDL) to investigate the regional impacts of historical anthropogenic land useland cover change (LULCC) on combined extremes of temperature and humidity. A bivariate assessment allows us to consider aridity and moist enthalpy extremes, quantities central to human experience of near-surface climate conditions. We show that according to this model, conversion of forests to cropland has contributed to much of the upper central US and central Europe experiencing extreme hot, dry summers every 2-3 years instead of every 10 years. In the tropics, historical patterns of wood harvesting, shifting cultivation and regrowth of secondary vegetation have enhanced near surface moist enthalpy, leading to extensive increases in the occurrence of humid conditions throughout the tropics year round. These critical land use processes and practices are not included in many current generation land models, yet these results identify them as critical factors in the energy and water cycles of the midlatitudes and tropics.
Nitrogen (N) pollution is shaped by multiple processes, the combined effects of which remain uncertain, particularly in the tropics. We use a global land biosphere model to analyze historical ...terrestrial-freshwater N budgets, considering the effects of anthropogenic N inputs, atmospheric CO
, land use, and climate. We estimate that globally, land currently sequesters 11 (10-13)% of annual N inputs. Some river basins, however, sequester >50% of their N inputs, buffering coastal waters against eutrophication and society against greenhouse gas-induced warming. Other basins, releasing >25% more than they receive, are mostly located in the tropics, where recent deforestation, agricultural intensification, and/or exports of land N storage can create large N pollution sources. The tropics produce 56 ± 6% of global land N pollution despite covering only 34% of global land area and receiving far lower amounts of fertilizers than the extratropics. Tropical land use should thus be thoroughly considered in managing global N pollution.
Human land use activities have resulted in large changes to the biogeochemical and biophysical properties of the Earth's surface, with consequences for climate and other ecosystem services. In the ...future, land use activities are likely to expand and/or intensify further to meet growing demands for food, fiber, and energy. As part of the World Climate Research Program Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP6), the international community has developed the next generation of advanced Earth system models (ESMs) to estimate the combined effects of human activities (e.g., land use and fossil fuel emissions) on the carbon–climate system. A new set of historical data based on the History of the Global Environment database (HYDE), and multiple alternative scenarios of the future (2015–2100) from Integrated Assessment Model (IAM) teams, is required as input for these models. With most ESM simulations for CMIP6 now completed, it is important to document the land use patterns used by those simulations. Here we present results from the Land-Use Harmonization 2 (LUH2) project, which smoothly connects updated historical reconstructions of land use with eight new future projections in the format required for ESMs. The harmonization strategy estimates the fractional land use patterns, underlying land use transitions, key agricultural management information, and resulting secondary lands annually, while minimizing the differences between the end of the historical reconstruction and IAM initial conditions and preserving changes depicted by the IAMs in the future. The new approach builds on a similar effort from CMIP5 and is now provided at higher resolution (0.25°×0.25°) over a longer time domain (850–2100, with extensions to 2300) with more detail (including multiple crop and pasture types and associated management practices) using more input datasets (including Landsat remote sensing data) and updated algorithms (wood harvest and shifting cultivation); it is assessed via a new diagnostic package. The new LUH2 products contain > 50 times the information content of the datasets used in CMIP5 and are designed to enable new and improved estimates of the combined effects of land use on the global carbon–climate system.
The authors describe carbon system formulation and simulation characteristics of two new global coupled carbon–climate Earth System Models (ESM), ESM2M and ESM2G. These models demonstrate good ...climate fidelity as described in part I of this study while incorporating explicit and consistent carbon dynamics. The two models differ almost exclusively in the physical ocean component; ESM2M uses the Modular Ocean Model version 4.1 with vertical pressure layers, whereas ESM2G uses generalized ocean layer dynamics with a bulk mixed layer and interior isopycnal layers. On land, both ESMs include a revised land model to simulate competitive vegetation distributions and functioning, including carbon cycling among vegetation, soil, and atmosphere. In the ocean, both models include new biogeochemical algorithms including phytoplankton functional group dynamics with flexible stoichiometry. Preindustrial simulations are spun up to give stable, realistic carbon cycle means and variability. Significant differences in simulation characteristics of these two models are described. Because of differences in oceanic ventilation rates, ESM2M has a stronger biological carbon pump but weaker northward implied atmospheric CO₂ transport than ESM2G. The major advantages of ESM2G over ESM2M are improved representation of surface chlorophyll in the Atlantic and Indian Oceans and thermocline nutrients and oxygen in the North Pacific. Improved tree mortality parameters in ESM2G produced more realistic carbon accumulation in vegetation pools. The major advantages of ESM2M over ESM2G are reduced nutrient and oxygen biases in the southern and tropical oceans.
Human land-use activities have resulted in large changes to the Earth's surface, with resulting implications for climate. In the future, land-use activities are likely to expand and intensify further ...to meet growing demands for food, fiber, and energy. The Land Use Model Intercomparison Project (LUMIP) aims to further advance understanding of the impacts of land-use and land-cover change (LULCC) on climate, specifically addressing the following questions. (1) What are the effects of LULCC on climate and biogeochemical cycling (past–future)? (2) What are the impacts of land management on surface fluxes of carbon, water, and energy, and are there regional land-management strategies with the promise to help mitigate climate change? In addressing these questions, LUMIP will also address a range of more detailed science questions to get at process-level attribution, uncertainty, data requirements, and other related issues in more depth and sophistication than possible in a multi-model context to date. There will be particular focus on the separation and quantification of the effects on climate from LULCC relative to all forcings, separation of biogeochemical from biogeophysical effects of land use, the unique impacts of land-cover change vs. land-management change, modulation of land-use impact on climate by land–atmosphere coupling strength, and the extent to which impacts of enhanced CO2 concentrations on plant photosynthesis are modulated by past and future land use.LUMIP involves three major sets of science activities: (1) development of an updated and expanded historical and future land-use data set, (2) an experimental protocol for specific LUMIP experiments for CMIP6, and (3) definition of metrics and diagnostic protocols that quantify model performance, and related sensitivities, with respect to LULCC. In this paper, we describe LUMIP activity (2), i.e., the LUMIP simulations that will formally be part of CMIP6. These experiments are explicitly designed to be complementary to simulations requested in the CMIP6 DECK and historical simulations and other CMIP6 MIPs including ScenarioMIP, C4MIP, LS3MIP, and DAMIP. LUMIP includes a two-phase experimental design. Phase one features idealized coupled and land-only model simulations designed to advance process-level understanding of LULCC impacts on climate, as well as to quantify model sensitivity to potential land-cover and land-use change. Phase two experiments focus on quantification of the historic impact of land use and the potential for future land management decisions to aid in mitigation of climate change. This paper documents these simulations in detail, explains their rationale, outlines plans for analysis, and describes a new subgrid land-use tile data request for selected variables (reporting model output data separately for primary and secondary land, crops, pasture, and urban land-use types). It is essential that modeling groups participating in LUMIP adhere to the experimental design as closely as possible and clearly report how the model experiments were executed.
The carbon cycle is a crucial Earth system component affecting climate and atmospheric composition. The response of natural carbon uptake to CO₂ and climate change will determine anthropogenic ...emissions compatible with a target CO₂ pathway. For phase 5 of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP5), four future representative concentration pathways (RCPs) have been generated by integrated assessment models (IAMs) and used as scenarios by state-of-the-art climate models, enabling quantification of compatible carbon emissions for the four scenarios by complex, process-based models. Here, the authors present results from 15 such Earth system GCMs for future changes in land and ocean carbon storage and the implications for anthropogenic emissions. The results are consistent with the underlying scenarios but show substantial model spread. Uncertainty in land carbon uptake due to differences among models is comparable with the spread across scenarios. Model estimates of historical fossil-fuel emissions agree well with reconstructions, and future projections for representative concentration pathway 2.6 (RCP2.6) and RCP4.5 are consistent with the IAMs. For high-end scenarios (RCP6.0 and RCP8.5), GCMs simulate smaller compatible emissions than the IAMs, indicating a larger climate–carbon cycle feedback in the GCMs in these scenarios. For the RCP2.6 mitigation scenario, an average reduction of 50% in emissions by 2050 from 1990 levels is required but with very large model spread (14%–96%). The models also disagree on both the requirement for sustained negative emissions to achieve the RCP2.6 CO₂ concentration and the success of this scenario to restrict global warming below 2°C. All models agree that the future airborne fraction depends strongly on the emissions profile with higher airborne fraction for higher emissions scenarios.
Globally, fires are a major source of carbon from the terrestrial biosphere to the atmosphere, occurring on a seasonal cycle and with substantial interannual variability. To understand past trends ...and variability in sources and sinks of terrestrial carbon, we need quantitative estimates of global fire distributions. Here we introduce an updated version of the Fire Including Natural and Agricultural Lands model, version 2 (FINAL.2), modified to include multiday burning and enhanced fire spread rate in forest crowns. We demonstrate that the improved model reproduces the interannual variability and spatial distribution of fire emissions reported in present‐day remotely sensed inventories. We use FINAL.2 to simulate historical (post‐1700) fires and attribute past fire trends and variability to individual drivers: land use and land cover change, population growth, and lightning variability. Global fire emissions of carbon increase by about 10% between 1700 and 1900, reaching a maximum of 3.4 Pg C yr−1 in the 1910s, followed by a decrease to about 5% below year 1700 levels by 2010. The decrease in emissions from the 1910s to the present day is driven mainly by land use change, with a smaller contribution from increased fire suppression due to increased human population and is largest in Sub‐Saharan Africa and South Asia. Interannual variability of global fire emissions is similar in the present day as in the early historical period, but present‐day wildfires would be more variable in the absence of land use change.
Key Points
The introduction of multiday burning into the model increases model fire interannual variability
Historical land use change increases area burned but decreases fire emissions
Recent land use change led to decreased global wildfire interannual variability
Abstract Future socioeconomic climate pathways have regional water-quality consequences whose severity and equity have not yet been fully understood across geographic and economic spectra. We use a ...process-based, terrestrial-freshwater ecosystem model to project 21st-century river nitrogen loads under these pathways. We find that fertilizer usage is the primary determinant of future river nitrogen loads, changing precipitation and warming have limited impacts, and CO 2 fertilization-induced vegetation growth enhancement leads to modest load reductions. Fertilizer applications to produce bioenergy in climate mitigation scenarios cause larger load increases than in the highest emission scenario. Loads generally increase in low-income regions, yet remain stable or decrease in high-income regions where agricultural advances, low food and feed production and waste, and/or well-enforced air pollution policies balance biofuel-associated fertilizer burdens. Consideration of biofuel production options with low fertilizer demand and rapid transfer of agricultural advances from high- to low-income regions may help avoid inequitable water-quality outcomes from climate mitigation.
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