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Title: Impact of the 2015/2016 El Niño on the terrestrial carbon cycle constrained by bottom-up and top-down approaches

Journal Article · · Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, Series B: Biological Sciences
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  1. Ludwig Maximilians Univ. Munich, Munich (Germany); Lab. des Sciences du Climat et de l'Environnement (LSCE), Gif-sur-Yvette (France)
  2. Univ. of Exeter, Exeter (United Kingdom)
  3. Boston Univ., Boston, MA (United States)
  4. Univ. de Toulouse, Toulouse (France)
  5. Centre Bordeaux Aquitaine, Villenave d'Ornon (France)
  6. Univ. of Victoria, Victoria, BC (Canada)
  7. CSIRO Oceans and Atmosphere, Canberra, ACT (Australia)
  8. Lab. des Sciences du Climat et de l'Environnement (LSCE), Gif-sur-Yvette (France)
  9. Wuhan Univ., Wuhan (People's Republic of China)
  10. CNRS/Meteo-France/Univ. Federale de Toulouse, Toulouse (France)
  11. Univ. of Illinois, Urbana, IL (United States)
  12. Univ. of Bern, Bern (Switzerland)
  13. Institute of Applied Energy (IAE), Tokyo (Japan)
  14. National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, CO (United States)
  15. Environment and Climate Change Canada, Downsview, ON (Canada)
  16. Max Planck Institute for Meteorology, Hamburg (Germany)
  17. Ludwig Maximilians Univ. Munich, Munich (Germany); Max Planck Institute for Meteorology, Hamburg (Germany)
  18. NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC), Greenbelt, MD (United States)
  19. Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry, Jena (Germany)
  20. Auburn Univ., Auburn, AL (United States)
  21. Univ. Libre de Bruxelles, Brussels (Belgium)
  22. Oak Ridge National Lab. (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States)
  23. Met Office Hadley Centre, Exeter (United Kingdom)
  24. Univ. of Maryland, College Park, MD (United States); Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Beijing (People's Republic of China)
+ Show Author Affiliations

Evaluating the response of the land carbon sink to the anomalies in temperature and drought imposed by El Niño events provides insights into the present-day carbon cycle and its climate-driven variability. It is also a necessary step to build confidence in terrestrial ecosystems models' response to the warming and drying stresses expected in the future over many continents, and particularly in the tropics. Here we present an in-depth analysis of the response of the terrestrial carbon cycle to the 2015/2016 El Niño that imposed extreme warming and dry conditions in the tropics and other sensitive regions. First, we provide a synthesis of the spatio-temporal evolution of anomalies in net land–atmosphere CO2 fluxes estimated by two in situ measurements based on atmospheric inversions and 16 land-surface models (LSMs) from TRENDYv6. Simulated changes in ecosystem productivity, decomposition rates and fire emissions are also investigated. Inversions and LSMs generally agree on the decrease and subsequent recovery of the land sink in response to the onset, peak and demise of El Niño conditions and point to the decreased strength of the land carbon sink: by 0.4–0.7 PgC yr–1 (inversions) and by 1.0 PgC yr–1 (LSMs) during 2015/2016. As a result, LSM simulations indicate that a decrease in productivity, rather than increase in respiration, dominated the net biome productivity anomalies in response to ENSO throughout the tropics, mainly associated with prolonged drought conditions.

Research Organization:
Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE Office of Science (SC), Biological and Environmental Research (BER) (SC-23)
Grant/Contract Number:
AC05-00OR22725
OSTI ID:
1484986
Journal Information:
Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, Series B: Biological Sciences, Journal Name: Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, Series B: Biological Sciences Journal Issue: 1760 Vol. 373; ISSN 0962-8436
Publisher:
The Royal Society PublishingCopyright Statement
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English

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  • Tebaldi, Claudia; Knutti, Reto
  • Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences, Vol. 365, Issue 1857 https://doi.org/10.1098/rsta.2007.2076
journal June 2007
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Cited By (6)

Drought: Progress in broadening its understanding journal December 2019
No Proportional Increase of Terrestrial Gross Carbon Sequestration From the Greening Earth journal August 2019
El Niño‐Southern Oscillation‐Induced Variability of Terrestrial Gross Primary Production During the Satellite Era journal August 2019
Satellite-observed pantropical carbon dynamics journal July 2019
New insights into the variability of the tropical land carbon cycle from the El Niño of 2015/2016 journal October 2018
Tropical forests did not recover from the strong 2015–2016 El Niño event journal February 2020

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Related Subjects

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES
El Nino/Southern Oscillation
atmospheric inversions
carbon cycle
land-surface models