The terrestrial biosphere shows substantial inertia in its response to environmental change. Hence, assessments of transient changes in ecosystem properties to 2100 do not capture the full magnitude ...of the response realized once ecosystems reach an effective equilibrium with the changed environmental boundary conditions. This equilibrium state can be termed the committed state, in contrast to a transient state in which the ecosystem is in disequilibrium. The difference in ecosystem properties between the transient and committed states represents the committed change yet to be realized. Here an ensemble of dynamic global vegetation model simulations was used to assess the changes in tree cover and carbon storage for a variety of committed states, relative to a preindustrial baseline, and to attribute the drivers of uncertainty. Using a subset of simulations, the committed changes in these variables post‐2100, assuming climate stabilization, were calculated. The results show large committed changes in tree cover and carbon storage, with model disparities driven by residence time in the tropics, and residence time and productivity in the boreal. Large changes remain ongoing well beyond the end of the 21st century. In boreal ecosystems, the simulated increase in vegetation carbon storage above preindustrial levels was 20–95 Pg C at 2 K of warming, and 45–201 Pg C at 5 K, of which 38–155 Pg C was due to expansion in tree cover. Reducing the large uncertainties in long‐term commitment and rate‐of‐change of terrestrial carbon uptake will be crucial for assessments of emissions budgets consistent with limiting climate change.
Plain Language Summary
Changes in climate and atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration affect ecosystems. One result of these effects, projected by most vegetation models, is that the global land biosphere is expected to continue to provide a net uptake of carbon dioxide throughout the 21st century. Characterizing this is important for policy, as it influences the amount of carbon dioxide emissions reductions needed to limit global warming. However, the effects of such environmental changes on land ecosystems are not all realized instantly. Ecosystems may continue to react to a change in their wider environment for decades or centuries after that change has occurred. These delayed reactions are termed the committed change. We found widespread agreement among multiple vegetation models that land in the far north will continue to take up a large amount of carbon in the long‐term, as a result of committed responses to climate change and carbon dioxide increases. The magnitude of uptake varied between simulations and was partially driven by an advance of the northern treeline. A less consistent model response was found in the tropics. The large amount of carbon involved, and associated climate policy implications, illustrates the benefits of further measurements leading to more accurate vegetation model calibration.
Key Points
Terrestrial vegetation composition and carbon storage continue to change very substantially after stabilization of climate
Uncertainty in this committed carbon uptake is of the order of several hundred Pg C, complicating emission budget calculations
Vegetation dynamics need to be more routinely represented in the coupled Earth System Models used to make climate projections
Given the importance of Amazon rainforest in the global carbon and hydrological cycles, there is a need to parameterize and validate ecosystem gas exchange and vegetation models for this region in ...order to adequately simulate present and future carbon and water balances. In this study, a sun and shade canopy gas exchange model is calibrated and evaluated at five rainforest sites using eddy correlation measurements of carbon and energy fluxes. Results from the model-data evaluation suggest that with adequate parameterisation, photosynthesis models taking into account the separation of diffuse and direct irradiance and the dynamics of sunlit and shaded leaves can accurately represent photosynthesis in these forests. Also, stomatal conductance formulations that only take into account atmospheric demand fail to correctly simulate moisture and CO2 fluxes in forests with a pronounced dry season, particularly during afternoon conditions. Nevertheless, it is also the case that large uncertainties are associated not only with the eddy correlation data, but also with the estimates of ecosystem respiration required for model validation. To accurately simulate Gross Primary Productivity (GPP) and energy partitioning the most critical parameters and model processes are the quantum yield of photosynthetic uptake, the maximum carboxylation capacity of Rubisco, and simulation of stomatal conductance. Using this model-data synergy, we developed scaling functions to provide estimates of canopy photosynthetic parameters for a range of diverse forests across the Amazon region, utilising the best fitted parameter for maximum carboxylation capacity of Rubisco, and foliar nutrients (N and P) for all sites.
The concurrent effects of increasing atmospheric CO2 concentration, climate variability, and cropland establishment and abandonment on terrestrial carbon storage between 1920 and 1992 were assessed ...using a standard simulation protocol with four process‐based terrestrial biosphere models. Over the long‐term(1920–1992), the simulations yielded a time history of terrestrial uptake that is consistent (within the uncertainty) with a long‐term analysis based on ice core and atmospheric CO2 data. Up to 1958, three of four analyses indicated a net release of carbon from terrestrial ecosystems to the atmosphere caused by cropland establishment. After 1958, all analyses indicate a net uptake of carbon by terrestrial ecosystems, primarily because of the physiological effects of rapidly rising atmospheric CO2. During the 1980s the simulations indicate that terrestrial ecosystems stored between 0.3 and 1.5 Pg C yr−1, which is within the uncertainty of analysis based on CO2 and O2 budgets. Three of the four models indicated (in accordance with O2 evidence) that the tropics were approximately neutral while a net sink existed in ecosystems north of the tropics. Although all of the models agree that the long‐term effect of climate on carbon storage has been small relative to the effects of increasing atmospheric CO2 and land use, the models disagree as to whether climate variability and change in the twentieth century has promoted carbon storage or release. Simulated interannual variability from 1958 generally reproduced the El Niño/Southern Oscillation (ENSO)‐scale variability in the atmospheric CO2 increase, but there were substantial differences in the magnitude of interannual variability simulated by the models. The analysis of the ability of the models to simulate the changing amplitude of the seasonal cycle of atmospheric CO2 suggested that the observed trend may be a consequence of CO2 effects, climate variability, land use changes, or a combination of these effects. The next steps for improving the process‐based simulation of historical terrestrial carbon include (1) the transfer of insight gained from stand‐level process studies to improve the sensitivity of simulated carbon storage responses to changes in CO2 and climate, (2) improvements in the data sets used to drive the models so that they incorporate the timing, extent, and types of major disturbances, (3) the enhancement of the models so that they consider major crop types and management schemes, (4) development of data sets that identify the spatial extent of major crop types and management schemes through time, and (5) the consideration of the effects of anthropogenic nitrogen deposition. The evaluation of the performance of the models in the context of a more complete consideration of the factors influencing historical terrestrial carbon dynamics is important for reducing uncertainties in representing the role of terrestrial ecosystems in future projections of the Earth system.
The response of atmospheric CO^sub 2^ and climate to the reconstructed variability in solar irradiance and radiative forcing by volcanoes over the last millennium is examined by applying a coupled ...physical-biogeochemical climate model that includes the Lund-Potsdam-Jena dynamic global vegetation model (LPJ-DGVM) and a simplified analogue of a coupled atmosphere-ocean general circulation model. The modeled variations of atmospheric CO^sub 2^ and Northern Hemisphere (NH) mean surface temperature are compatible with reconstructions from different Antarctic ice cores and temperature proxy data. Simulations where the magnitude of solar irradiance changes is increased yield a mismatch between model results and CO^sub 2^ data, providing evidence for modest changes in solar irradiance and global mean temperatures over the past millennium and arguing against a significant amplification of the response of global or hemispheric annual mean temperature to solar forcing. Linear regression (r = 0.97) between modeled changes in atmospheric CO^sub 2^ and NH mean surface temperature yields a CO^sub 2^ increase of about 12 ppm for a temperature increase of 1 °C and associated precipitation and cloud cover changes. Then, the CO^sub 2^ data range of 12 ppm implies that multi-decadal NH temperature changes between 1100 and 1700 AD had to be within 1 °C. Modeled preindustrial variations in atmospheric δ^sup 13^C are small compared to the uncertainties in ice core δ^sup 13^C data. Simulations with natural forcings only suggest that atmospheric CO^sub 2^ would have remained around the preindustrial concentration of 280 ppm without anthropogenic emissions. Sensitivity experiments show that atmospheric CO^sub 2^ closely follows decadal-mean temperature changes when changes in ocean circulation and ocean-sediment interactions are not important. The response in terrestrial carbon storage to factorial changes in temperature, the seasonality of temperature, precipitation, and atmospheric CO^sub 2^ has been determined.PUBLICATION ABSTRACT
Future climate change will have impact on global and regional terrestrial carbon balances. The fate of African tropical forests over the 21st century has been investigated through global coupled ...climate carbon cycle model simulations. Under the SRES-A2 socio-economic CO2 emission scenario of the IPCC, and using the Institut Pierre Simon Laplace coupled ocean-terrestrial carbon cycle and climate model, IPSL-CM4-LOOP, we found that the warming over African ecosystems induces a reduction of net ecosystem productivity, making a 38% contribution to the global climate-carbon cycle positive feedback. Most of this contribution comes from African grasslands, followed by African savannahs, African tropical forest contributing little to the global climate-carbon feedback. However, the vulnerability of the African rainforest ecosystem is quite large. In contrast, the Amazon forest, despite its lower vulnerability, has a much larger overall contribution due to its 6 times larger extent.
Tropospheric ozone (O(3)) is a global air pollutant that causes billions of dollars in lost plant productivity annually. It is an important anthropogenic greenhouse gas, and as a secondary air ...pollutant, it is present at high concentrations in rural areas far from industrial sources. It also reduces plant productivity by entering leaves through the stomata, generating other reactive oxygen species and causing oxidative stress, which in turn decreases photosynthesis, plant growth, and biomass accumulation. The deposition of O(3) into vegetation through stomata is an important sink for tropospheric O(3), but this sink is modified by other aspects of environmental change, including rising atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations, rising temperature, altered precipitation, and nitrogen availability. We review the atmospheric chemistry governing tropospheric O(3) mass balance, the effects of O(3) on stomatal conductance and net primary productivity, and implications for agriculture, carbon sequestration, and climate change.
We present a computationally efficient modelling system, IMOGEN, designed to undertake global and regional assessment of climate change impacts on the physical and biogeochemical behaviour of the ...land surface. A pattern-scaling approach to climate change drives a gridded land surface and vegetation model MOSES/TRIFFID. The structure allows extrapolation of General Circulation Model (GCM) simulations to different future pathways of greenhouse gases, including rapid first-order assessments of how the land surface and associated biogeochemical cycles might change. Evaluation of how new terrestrial process understanding influences such predictions can also be made with relative ease.
The difference is found at the marginsThe terrestrial biosphere absorbs about a quarter of all anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions, but the amount that they take up varies from year to year. Why? ...Combining models and observations, Ahlstrom et al. found that marginal ecosystems-semiarid savannas and low-latitude shrublands-are responsible for most of the variability. Biological productivity in these semiarid regions is water-limited and strongly associated with variations in precipitation, unlike wetter tropical areas. Understanding carbon uptake by these marginal lands may help to improve predictions of variations in the global carbon cycle.Science, this issue p. 895 The growth rate of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) concentrations since industrialization is characterized by large interannual variability, mostly resulting from variability in CO2 uptake by terrestrial ecosystems (typically termed carbon sink). However, the contributions of regional ecosystems to that variability are not well known. Using an ensemble of ecosystem and land-surface models and an empirical observation-based product of global gross primary production, we show that the mean sink, trend, and interannual variability in CO2 uptake by terrestrial ecosystems are dominated by distinct biogeographic regions. Whereas the mean sink is dominated by highly productive lands (mainly tropical forests), the trend and interannual variability of the sink are dominated by semi-arid ecosystems whose carbon balance is strongly associated with circulation-driven variations in both precipitation and temperature.
Predictions of future climate change require complex computer models of the climate system to represent the full range of processes and interactions that influence climate. The Met Office Hadley ...Centre uses 'families' of models as part of the Met Office Unified Model Framework to address different classes of problems. The HadGEM family is a suite of state-of-the-art global environment models that are used to reduce uncertainty and represent and predict complex feedbacks. The HadCM3 family is a suite of well established but cheaper models that are used for multiple simulations, for example, to quantify uncertainty or to test the impact of multiple emissions scenarios.
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