Plant Physiological Responses to Rising CO2 Modify Simulated Daily Runoff Intensity With Implications for Globa-Scale Flood Risk Assessment
- Univ. of Georgia, Athens, GA (United States)
- Univ. of California, Irvine, CA (United States)
- Oak Ridge National Lab. (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States); Univ. of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN (United States)
- Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)
- National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, CO (United States)
- Univ. of Washington, Seattle, WA (United States)
Abstract Climate change is expected to increase the frequency of flooding events and, thus, the risks of flood‐related mortality and infrastructure damage. Global‐scale assessments of future flooding from Earth system models based only on precipitation changes neglect important processes that occur within the land surface, particularly plant physiological responses to rising CO 2 . Higher CO 2 can reduce stomatal conductance and transpiration, which may lead to increased soil moisture and runoff in some regions, promoting flooding even without changes in precipitation. Here we assess the relative impacts of plant physiological and radiative greenhouse effects on changes in daily runoff intensity over tropical continents using the Community Earth System Model. We find that extreme percentile rates increase significantly more than mean runoff in response to higher CO 2 . Plant physiological effects have a small impact on precipitation intensity but are a dominant driver of runoff intensification, contributing to one half of the 99th and one third of the 99.9th percentile runoff intensity changes.
- Research Organization:
- Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE Office of Science (SC), Biological and Environmental Research (BER)
- Grant/Contract Number:
- AC05-00OR22725; DE‐SC0012152
- OSTI ID:
- 1490571
- Alternate ID(s):
- OSTI ID: 1483007
- Journal Information:
- Geophysical Research Letters, Vol. 45, Issue 22; ISSN 0094-8276
- Publisher:
- American Geophysical UnionCopyright Statement
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
Web of Science
Multimodel Analysis of Future Land Use and Climate Change Impacts on Ecosystem Functioning
|
journal | July 2019 |
The effect of plant physiological responses to rising CO2 on global streamflow
|
journal | October 2019 |
Multimodel Analysis of Future Land Use and Climate Change Impacts on Ecosystem Functioning
|
text | January 2019 |
Multimodel Analysis of Future Land Use and Climate Change Impacts on Ecosystem Functioning | text | January 2019 |
Similar Records
Forest response to rising CO2 drives zonally asymmetric rainfall change over tropical land
Why Does Amazon Precipitation Decrease When Tropical Forests Respond to Increasing CO2 ?