No constraint on long-term tropical land carbon-climate feedback uncertainties from interannual variability

Liu, Laibao; Fisher, Rosie A.; Douville, Hervé; Padrón, Ryan S.; Berg, Alexis; Mao, Jiafu; Alessandri, Andrea; Kim, Hyungjun; Seneviratne, Sonia I.

doi:10.1038/s43247-024-01504-6

No constraint on long-term tropical land carbon-climate feedback uncertainties from interannual variability

Journal Article · Tue Jun 25 00:00:00 EDT 2024 · Communications Earth & Environment

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1038/s43247-024-01504-6· OSTI ID:2397407

^[1]; Fisher, Rosie A. ^[2]; ^[3]; ^[4]; ^[5]; ^[6]; Alessandri, Andrea ^[7]; ^[8]; ^[1]

Eidgenoessische Technische Hochschule (ETH), Zurich (Switzerland). Institute for Atmospheric and Climate Science
CICERO Center for International Climate Science, Oslo (Norway)
Univ. of Toulouse (France); Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) (France)
Eidgenoessische Technische Hochschule (ETH), Zurich (Switzerland). Institute for Atmospheric and Climate Science; Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research WSL, Birmensdorf (Switzerland)
Univ. of Montreal, QC (Canada)
Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States)
Italian National Research Council, Bologna (Italy). Inst. of Atmospheric Sciences and Climate (ISAC)
Korea Advanced Inst. Science and Technology (KAIST), Daejeon (Korea, Republic of)

Unraveling drivers of the interannual variability of tropical land carbon cycle is critical for understanding land carbon-climate feedbacks. Here we utilize two generations of factorial model experiments to show that interannual variability of tropical land carbon uptake under both present and future climate is consistently dominated by terrestrial water availability variations in Earth system models. The magnitude of this interannual sensitivity of tropical land carbon uptake to water availability variations under future climate shows a large spread across the latest 16 models (2.3 ± 1.5 PgC/yr/Tt H₂O), which is constrained to 1.3 ± 0.8 PgC/yr/Tt H₂O using observations and the emergent constraint methodology. However, the long-term tropical land carbon-climate feedback uncertainties in the latest models can no longer be directly constrained by interannual variability compared with previous models, given that additional important processes are not well reflected in interannual variability but could determine long-term land carbon storage. Our results highlight the limited implication of interannual variability for long-term tropical land carbon-climate feedbacks and help isolate remaining uncertainties with respect to water limitations on tropical land carbon sink in Earth system models.

View Accepted Manuscript (DOE)

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

OSTI ID:: 2397407

Journal Information:: Communications Earth & Environment, Journal Name: Communications Earth & Environment Journal Issue: 1 Vol. 5; ISSN 2662-4435

Publisher:: Springer NatureCopyright Statement

Country of Publication:: United States

Language:: English

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