Warm-season net CO 2 uptake outweighs cold-season emissions over Alaskan North Slope tundra under current and RCP8.5 climate
Abstract
Abstract Arctic warming has increased vegetation growth and soil respiration during recent decades. The rate of Arctic warming will likely amplify over the 21st century. Previous studies have revealed that the most severe Arctic warming occurred during the cold season (September to May). The cold-season warming has posited significant CO 2 emissions to the atmosphere via respiration, possibly offsetting warm-season (June to August) net CO 2 uptake. However, prevailing Earth system land models poorly represent cold-season CO 2 emissions, making estimates of Arctic tundra annual CO 2 budgets highly uncertain. Here, we demonstrate that an improved version of the energy exascale Earth system model (E3SM) land model (ELMv1-ECA) captures the large amount of cold-season CO 2 emissions over Alaskan Arctic tundra as reported by two independent, observationally-constrained datasets. We found that the recent seven-decades warming trend of cold-season soil temperature is three times that of the warm-season. The climate sensitivity of warm-season net CO 2 uptake, however, is threefold higher than for the cold-season net CO 2 loss, mainly due to stronger plant resilience than microbial resilience to hydroclimatic extremes. Consequently, the modeled warm-season net CO 2 uptake has a larger positive trend (0.74 ± 0.14 gC m −2 yrmore »
- Publication Date:
- Research Org.:
- Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)
- Sponsoring Org.:
- USDOE Office of Science (SC), Biological and Environmental Research (BER)
- OSTI Identifier:
- 1835336
- Alternate Identifier(s):
- OSTI ID: 1813389
- Grant/Contract Number:
- SC0019063; AC02-05CH11231
- Resource Type:
- Published Article
- Journal Name:
- Environmental Research Letters
- Additional Journal Information:
- Journal Name: Environmental Research Letters Journal Volume: 16 Journal Issue: 5; Journal ID: ISSN 1748-9326
- Publisher:
- IOP Publishing
- Country of Publication:
- United Kingdom
- Language:
- English
- Subject:
- 54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES; soil respiration; carbon budget; Alaska Arctic tundra; tundra plant resilience; hydroclimatic extremes; E3SM land model (ELM)
Citation Formats
Tao, Jing, Zhu, Qing, Riley, William J., and Neumann, Rebecca B. Warm-season net CO 2 uptake outweighs cold-season emissions over Alaskan North Slope tundra under current and RCP8.5 climate. United Kingdom: N. p., 2021.
Web. doi:10.1088/1748-9326/abf6f5.
Tao, Jing, Zhu, Qing, Riley, William J., & Neumann, Rebecca B. Warm-season net CO 2 uptake outweighs cold-season emissions over Alaskan North Slope tundra under current and RCP8.5 climate. United Kingdom. https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/abf6f5
Tao, Jing, Zhu, Qing, Riley, William J., and Neumann, Rebecca B. Fri .
"Warm-season net CO 2 uptake outweighs cold-season emissions over Alaskan North Slope tundra under current and RCP8.5 climate". United Kingdom. https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/abf6f5.
@article{osti_1835336,
title = {Warm-season net CO 2 uptake outweighs cold-season emissions over Alaskan North Slope tundra under current and RCP8.5 climate},
author = {Tao, Jing and Zhu, Qing and Riley, William J. and Neumann, Rebecca B.},
abstractNote = {Abstract Arctic warming has increased vegetation growth and soil respiration during recent decades. The rate of Arctic warming will likely amplify over the 21st century. Previous studies have revealed that the most severe Arctic warming occurred during the cold season (September to May). The cold-season warming has posited significant CO 2 emissions to the atmosphere via respiration, possibly offsetting warm-season (June to August) net CO 2 uptake. However, prevailing Earth system land models poorly represent cold-season CO 2 emissions, making estimates of Arctic tundra annual CO 2 budgets highly uncertain. Here, we demonstrate that an improved version of the energy exascale Earth system model (E3SM) land model (ELMv1-ECA) captures the large amount of cold-season CO 2 emissions over Alaskan Arctic tundra as reported by two independent, observationally-constrained datasets. We found that the recent seven-decades warming trend of cold-season soil temperature is three times that of the warm-season. The climate sensitivity of warm-season net CO 2 uptake, however, is threefold higher than for the cold-season net CO 2 loss, mainly due to stronger plant resilience than microbial resilience to hydroclimatic extremes. Consequently, the modeled warm-season net CO 2 uptake has a larger positive trend (0.74 ± 0.14 gC m −2 yr −1 ) than that of cold-season CO 2 emissions (0.64 ± 0.11 gC m −2 yr −1 ) from 1950 to 2017, supported by enhanced plant nutrient uptake and increased light- and water-use efficiency. With continued warming and elevated CO 2 concentrations under the representative concentration pathway (RCP) 8.5 scenario, the increasing rate of warm-season net CO 2 uptake is more than twice the rate of cold-season emissions (1.33 ± 0.32 gC m −2 yr −1 vs 0.50 ± 0.12 gC m −2 yr −1 ), making the modeled Alaskan Arctic tundra ecosystem a net CO 2 sink by 2100. However, other geomorphological and ecological disturbances (e.g. abrupt permafrost thaw, thermokarst development, landscape-scale hydrological changes, wildfire, and insects) that are not considered here might alter our conclusion.},
doi = {10.1088/1748-9326/abf6f5},
journal = {Environmental Research Letters},
number = 5,
volume = 16,
place = {United Kingdom},
year = {Fri Apr 30 00:00:00 EDT 2021},
month = {Fri Apr 30 00:00:00 EDT 2021}
}
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