Increase of Carbon Cycle Feedback with Climate Sensitivity: Results from a coupled Climate and Carbon Cycle Model
Coupled climate and carbon cycle modeling studies have shown that the feedback between global warming and the carbon cycle, in particular the terrestrial carbon cycle, could accelerate climate change and result in larger warming. In this paper, we investigate the sensitivity of this feedback for year-2100 global warming in the range of 0 K to 8 K. Differing climate sensitivities to increased CO{sub 2} content are imposed on the carbon cycle models for the same emissions. Emissions from the SRES A2 scenario are used. We use a fully-coupled climate and carbon cycle model, the INtegrated Climate and CArbon model (INCCA) the NCAR/DOE Parallel Coupled Model coupled to the IBIS terrestrial biosphere model and a modified-OCMIP ocean biogeochemistry model. In our model, for scenarios with year-2100 global warming increasing from 0 to 8 K, land uptake decreases from 47% to 29% of total CO{sub 2} emissions. Due to competing effects, ocean uptake (16%) shows almost no change at all. Atmospheric CO{sub 2} concentration increases were 48% higher in the run with 8 K global climate warming than in the case with no warming. Our results indicate that carbon cycle amplification of climate warming will be greater if there is higher climate sensitivity to increased atmospheric CO{sub 2} content; the carbon cycle feedback factor increases from 1.13 to 1.48 when global warming increases from 3.2 to 8 K.
- Research Organization:
- Lawrence Livermore National Lab. (LLNL), Livermore, CA (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- US Department of Energy (US)
- DOE Contract Number:
- W-7405-ENG-48
- OSTI ID:
- 15015129
- Report Number(s):
- UCRL-JRNL-203401; TRN: US200509%%36
- Journal Information:
- Tellus B, Vol. 57B; Other Information: Journal publication March 17, 2005; PDF-FILE: 31 ; SIZE: 1.8 MBYTES; PBD: 1 Apr 2004
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
Similar Records
Climate–Carbon Cycle Feedback Analysis: Results from the C4 MIP Model Intercomparison
INCCA: Integrated Climate and Carbon