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Title: Global land carbon sink response to temperature and precipitation varies with ENSO phase

Journal Article · · Environmental Research Letters
 [1];  [1];  [2];  [3];  [1];  [4];  [5];  [6];  [7];  [8];  [9];  [10];  [11];  [12];  [13];  [14];  [8];  [7];  [5];  [8] more »; ORCiD logo [8];  [15];  [16];  [17];  [8];  [16] « less
  1. Carnegie Inst. of Science, Stanford, CA (United States)
  2. Woods Hole Research Center, Falmouth, MA (United States)
  3. Northern Arizona Univ., Flagstaff, AZ (United States)
  4. Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission (CEA), Gif sur Yvette (France)
  5. Peking Univ., Beijing (China)
  6. Montana State Univ., Bozeman, MT (United States)
  7. California Inst. of Technology (CalTech), Pasadena, CA (United States)
  8. Oak Ridge National Lab. (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States)
  9. Univ. of Maine, Orno, ME (United States)
  10. Pacific Northwest National Lab. (PNNL), Richland, WA (United States)
  11. National Inst. for Environmental Studies, Tsukuba (Japan)
  12. Univ. of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, IL (United States)
  13. Tsinghua Univ., Beijing (China)
  14. Ames Lab. and Iowa State Univ., Ames, IA (United States)
  15. Univ. of Kentucky, Lexington, KY (United States)
  16. Auburn Univ., AL (United States)
  17. NASA Ames Research Center (ARC), Moffett Field, Mountain View, CA (United States)
+ Show Author Affiliations

Climate variability associated with the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and its consequent impacts on land carbon sink interannual variability have been used as a basis for investigating carbon cycle responses to climate variability more broadly, and to inform the sensitivity of the tropical carbon budget to climate change. Past studies have presented opposing views about whether temperature or precipitation is the primary factor driving the response of the land carbon sink to ENSO. We show that the dominant driver varies with ENSO phase. And whereas tropical temperature explains sink dynamics following El Niño conditions (r TG,P = 0.59, p < 0.01), the post La Niña sink is driven largely by tropical precipitation (r PG,T= -0.46, p = 0.04). This finding points to an ENSO-phase-dependent interplay between water availability and temperature in controlling the carbon uptake response to climate variations in tropical ecosystems. Furthermore, we find that none of a suite of ten contemporary terrestrial biosphere models captures these ENSO-phase-dependent responses, highlighting a key uncertainty in modeling climate impacts on the future of the global land carbon sink.

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:
1376649
Journal Information:
Environmental Research Letters, Vol. 12, Issue 6; ISSN 1748-9326
Publisher:
IOP PublishingCopyright Statement
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English
Citation Metrics:
Cited by: 38 works
Citation information provided by
Web of Science

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Cited By (16)

Linkage between tropical terrestrial carbon cycle and precipitation: The two anomalous years of 1979 and 1996 journal January 2019
Drought, Heat, and the Carbon Cycle: a Review journal June 2018
Greenhouse Gas Concentration and Volcanic Eruptions Controlled the Variability of Terrestrial Carbon Uptake Over the Last Millennium journal June 2019
Sensitivity of atmospheric CO2 growth rate to observed changes in terrestrial water storage journal August 2018
Enhanced response of global wetland methane emissions to the 2015–2016 El Niño-Southern Oscillation event journal June 2018
Forests dominate the interannual variability of the North American carbon sink journal August 2018
Coupling of El Niño events and long-term warming leads to pervasive climate extremes in the terrestrial tropics journal October 2019
Widespread reduction in sun-induced fluorescence from the Amazon during the 2015/2016 El Niño
  • Koren, Gerbrand; van Schaik, Erik; Araújo, Alessandro C.
  • Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, Vol. 373, Issue 1760 https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2017.0408
journal October 2018
Interannual variation of terrestrial carbon cycle: Issues and perspectives journal November 2019
Enhanced North American carbon uptake associated with El Niño journal June 2019
On what scales can GOSAT flux inversions constrain anomalies in terrestrial ecosystems? journal January 2019
Patterns and controls of inter-annual variability in the terrestrial carbon budget journal January 2017
Disequilibrium of terrestrial ecosystem CO2 budget caused by disturbance-induced emissions and non-CO2 carbon export flows: a global model assessment journal January 2019
Contrasting terrestrial carbon cycle responses to the 1997/98 and 2015/16 extreme El Niño events journal January 2018
Enhanced response of global wetland methane emissions to the 2015-2016 El Nino-Southern Oscillation event text January 2018
Drought, Heat, and the Carbon Cycle: a Review text January 2018

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Related Subjects

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES
climate-carbon feedback
tropical ecosystems
temperature
precipitation
El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO)