Higher climatological temperature sensitivity of soil carbon in cold than warm climates
Abstract
The projected loss of soil carbon to the atmosphere resulting from climate change is a potentially large but highly uncertain feedback to warming. The magnitude of this feedback is poorly constrained by observations and theory, and is disparately represented in Earth system models (ESMs). In this study, to assess the climatological temperature sensitivity of soil carbon, we calculate apparent soil carbon turnover times that reflect long-term and broad-scale rates of decomposition. We show that the climatological temperature control on carbon turnover in the top metre of global soils is more sensitive in cold climates than in warm climates and argue that it is critical to capture this emergent ecosystem property in global-scale models. We present a simplified model that explains the observed high cold-climate sensitivity using only the physical scaling of soil freeze-thaw state across climate gradients. Current ESMs fail to capture this pattern, except in an ESM that explicitly resolves vertical gradients in soil climate and carbon turnover. An observed weak tropical temperature sensitivity emerges in a different model that explicitly resolves mineralogical control on decomposition. Lastly, these results support projections of strong carbon-climate feedbacks from northern soils and demonstrate a method for ESMs to capture this emergent behaviour.
- Authors:
-
- Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)
- Stockholm Univ. (Sweden); Stanford Univ., CA (United States)
- National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, CO (United States)
- National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, CO (United States); Univ. of Colorado, Boulder, CO (United States)
- Publication Date:
- Research Org.:
- Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)
- Sponsoring Org.:
- USDOE Office of Science (SC), Biological and Environmental Research (BER)
- OSTI Identifier:
- 1532269
- Grant/Contract Number:
- AC02-05CH11231; FC03-97ER62402; SC0014374
- Resource Type:
- Journal Article: Accepted Manuscript
- Journal Name:
- Nature Climate Change
- Additional Journal Information:
- Journal Volume: 7; Journal Issue: 11; Journal ID: ISSN 1758-678X
- Publisher:
- Nature Publishing Group
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
- Subject:
- 54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES
Citation Formats
Koven, Charles D., Hugelius, Gustaf, Lawrence, David M., and Wieder, William R. Higher climatological temperature sensitivity of soil carbon in cold than warm climates. United States: N. p., 2017.
Web. doi:10.1038/nclimate3421.
Koven, Charles D., Hugelius, Gustaf, Lawrence, David M., & Wieder, William R. Higher climatological temperature sensitivity of soil carbon in cold than warm climates. United States. https://doi.org/10.1038/nclimate3421
Koven, Charles D., Hugelius, Gustaf, Lawrence, David M., and Wieder, William R. 2017.
"Higher climatological temperature sensitivity of soil carbon in cold than warm climates". United States. https://doi.org/10.1038/nclimate3421. https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/1532269.
@article{osti_1532269,
title = {Higher climatological temperature sensitivity of soil carbon in cold than warm climates},
author = {Koven, Charles D. and Hugelius, Gustaf and Lawrence, David M. and Wieder, William R.},
abstractNote = {The projected loss of soil carbon to the atmosphere resulting from climate change is a potentially large but highly uncertain feedback to warming. The magnitude of this feedback is poorly constrained by observations and theory, and is disparately represented in Earth system models (ESMs). In this study, to assess the climatological temperature sensitivity of soil carbon, we calculate apparent soil carbon turnover times that reflect long-term and broad-scale rates of decomposition. We show that the climatological temperature control on carbon turnover in the top metre of global soils is more sensitive in cold climates than in warm climates and argue that it is critical to capture this emergent ecosystem property in global-scale models. We present a simplified model that explains the observed high cold-climate sensitivity using only the physical scaling of soil freeze-thaw state across climate gradients. Current ESMs fail to capture this pattern, except in an ESM that explicitly resolves vertical gradients in soil climate and carbon turnover. An observed weak tropical temperature sensitivity emerges in a different model that explicitly resolves mineralogical control on decomposition. Lastly, these results support projections of strong carbon-climate feedbacks from northern soils and demonstrate a method for ESMs to capture this emergent behaviour.},
doi = {10.1038/nclimate3421},
url = {https://www.osti.gov/biblio/1532269},
journal = {Nature Climate Change},
issn = {1758-678X},
number = 11,
volume = 7,
place = {United States},
year = {Mon Oct 30 00:00:00 EDT 2017},
month = {Mon Oct 30 00:00:00 EDT 2017}
}
Web of Science
Works referenced in this record:
Field information links permafrost carbon to physical vulnerabilities of thawing: C AND N VULERABLITIES OF THAWING
journal, August 2012
- Harden, Jennifer W.; Koven, Charles D.; Ping, Chien-Lu
- Geophysical Research Letters, Vol. 39, Issue 15
The global carbon dioxide flux in soil respiration and its relationship to vegetation and climate
journal, January 1992
- Raich, J. W.; Schlesinger, W. H.
- Tellus B: Chemical and Physical Meteorology, Vol. 44, Issue 2
Global Convergence in the Temperature Sensitivity of Respiration at Ecosystem Level
journal, July 2010
- Mahecha, M. D.; Reichstein, M.; Carvalhais, N.
- Science, Vol. 329, Issue 5993
Soil carbon pools and world life zones
journal, July 1982
- Post, Wilfred M.; Emanuel, William R.; Zinke, Paul J.
- Nature, Vol. 298, Issue 5870
Improvements to a MODIS global terrestrial evapotranspiration algorithm
journal, August 2011
- Mu, Qiaozhen; Zhao, Maosheng; Running, Steven W.
- Remote Sensing of Environment, Vol. 115, Issue 8
SEIB–DGVM: A new Dynamic Global Vegetation Model using a spatially explicit individual-based approach
journal, January 2007
- Sato, Hisashi; Itoh, Akihiko; Kohyama, Takashi
- Ecological Modelling, Vol. 200, Issue 3-4
A dynamic global vegetation model for studies of the coupled atmosphere-biosphere system: DVGM FOR COUPLED CLIMATE STUDIES
journal, February 2005
- Krinner, G.; Viovy, Nicolas; de Noblet-Ducoudré, Nathalie
- Global Biogeochemical Cycles, Vol. 19, Issue 1
Will the tropical land biosphere dominate the climate–carbon cycle feedback during the twenty-first century?
journal, April 2007
- Raddatz, T. J.; Reick, C. H.; Knorr, W.
- Climate Dynamics, Vol. 29, Issue 6
Responses of two nonlinear microbial models to warming and increased carbon input
journal, January 2016
- Wang, Y. P.; Jiang, J.; Chen-Charpentier, B.
- Biogeosciences, Vol. 13, Issue 4
Quantifying global soil carbon losses in response to warming
journal, November 2016
- Crowther, T. W.; Todd-Brown, K. E. O.; Rowe, C. W.
- Nature, Vol. 540, Issue 7631
Improvements of the MODIS terrestrial gross and net primary production global data set
journal, March 2005
- Zhao, Maosheng; Heinsch, Faith Ann; Nemani, Ramakrishna R.
- Remote Sensing of Environment, Vol. 95, Issue 2
Long-term warming restructures Arctic tundra without changing net soil carbon storage
journal, May 2013
- Sistla, Seeta A.; Moore, John C.; Simpson, Rodney T.
- Nature, Vol. 497, Issue 7451
Global covariation of carbon turnover times with climate in terrestrial ecosystems
journal, September 2014
- Carvalhais, Nuno; Forkel, Matthias; Khomik, Myroslava
- Nature, Vol. 514, Issue 7521
Soil carbon storage controlled by interactions between geochemistry and climate
journal, August 2015
- Doetterl, Sebastian; Stevens, Antoine; Six, Johan
- Nature Geoscience, Vol. 8, Issue 10
Managing uncertainty in soil carbon feedbacks to climate change
journal, July 2016
- Bradford, Mark A.; Wieder, William R.; Bonan, Gordon B.
- Nature Climate Change, Vol. 6, Issue 8
The Northern Circumpolar Soil Carbon Database: spatially distributed datasets of soil coverage and soil carbon storage in the northern permafrost regions
journal, January 2013
- Hugelius, G.; Tarnocai, C.; Broll, G.
- Earth System Science Data, Vol. 5, Issue 1
The Representation of Snow in Land Surface Schemes: Results from PILPS 2(d)
journal, February 2001
- Slater, A. G.; Schlosser, C. A.; Desborough, C. E.
- Journal of Hydrometeorology, Vol. 2, Issue 1
Model estimates of CO2 emissions from soil in response to global warming
journal, May 1991
- Jenkinson, D. S.; Adams, D. E.; Wild, A.
- Nature, Vol. 351, Issue 6324
Global soil carbon projections are improved by modelling microbial processes
journal, July 2013
- Wieder, William R.; Bonan, Gordon B.; Allison, Steven D.
- Nature Climate Change, Vol. 3, Issue 10
Temperature sensitivity of soil carbon decomposition and feedbacks to climate change
journal, March 2006
- Davidson, Eric A.; Janssens, Ivan A.
- Nature, Vol. 440, Issue 7081
Estimated stocks of circumpolar permafrost carbon with quantified uncertainty ranges and identified data gaps
journal, January 2014
- Hugelius, G.; Strauss, J.; Zubrzycki, S.
- Biogeosciences, Vol. 11, Issue 23
Twenty-First-Century Compatible CO 2 Emissions and Airborne Fraction Simulated by CMIP5 Earth System Models under Four Representative Concentration Pathways
journal, July 2013
- Jones, Chris; Robertson, Eddy; Arora, Vivek
- Journal of Climate, Vol. 26, Issue 13
On the Temperature Dependence of Soil Respiration
journal, June 1994
- Lloyd, J.; Taylor, J. A.
- Functional Ecology, Vol. 8, Issue 3
Diagnosing Present and Future Permafrost from Climate Models
journal, August 2013
- Slater, Andrew G.; Lawrence, David M.
- Journal of Climate, Vol. 26, Issue 15
Evidence that decomposition rates of organic carbon in mineral soil do not vary with temperature
journal, April 2000
- Giardina, Christian P.; Ryan, Michael G.
- Nature, Vol. 404, Issue 6780
Carbon–Concentration and Carbon–Climate Feedbacks in CMIP5 Earth System Models
journal, August 2013
- Arora, Vivek K.; Boer, George J.; Friedlingstein, Pierre
- Journal of Climate, Vol. 26, Issue 15
GPCC Full Data Reanalysis Version 6.0 at 0.5°: Monthly Land-Surface Precipitation from Rain-Gauges built on GTS-based and Historic Data
dataset, January 2011
- Schneider, Udo; Becker, Andreas; Finger, Peter
- Global Precipitation Climatology Centre (GPCC) at Deutscher Wetterdienst
Causes of variation in soil carbon simulations from CMIP5 Earth system models and comparison with observations
journal, January 2013
- Todd-Brown, K. E. O.; Randerson, J. T.; Post, W. M.
- Biogeosciences, Vol. 10, Issue 3
Permafrost carbon-climate feedbacks accelerate global warming
journal, August 2011
- Koven, C. D.; Ringeval, B.; Friedlingstein, P.
- Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Vol. 108, Issue 36
Weaker soil carbon–climate feedbacks resulting from microbial and abiotic interactions
journal, November 2014
- Tang, Jinyun; Riley, William J.
- Nature Climate Change, Vol. 5, Issue 1
Analysis of Permafrost Thermal Dynamics and Response to Climate Change in the CMIP5 Earth System Models
journal, March 2013
- Koven, Charles D.; Riley, William J.; Stern, Alex
- Journal of Climate, Vol. 26, Issue 6
The effect of vertically resolved soil biogeochemistry and alternate soil C and N models on C dynamics of CLM4
journal, January 2013
- Koven, C. D.; Riley, W. J.; Subin, Z. M.
- Biogeosciences, Vol. 10, Issue 11
Radiocarbon constraints imply reduced carbon uptake by soils during the 21st century
journal, September 2016
- He, Y.; Trumbore, S. E.; Torn, M. S.
- Science, Vol. 353, Issue 6306
The HadGEM2-ES implementation of CMIP5 centennial simulations
journal, January 2011
- Jones, C. D.; Hughes, J. K.; Bellouin, N.
- Geoscientific Model Development, Vol. 4, Issue 3
Soil-carbon response to warming dependent on microbial physiology
journal, April 2010
- Allison, Steven D.; Wallenstein, Matthew D.; Bradford, Mark A.
- Nature Geoscience, Vol. 3, Issue 5
Controls on terrestrial carbon feedbacks by productivity versus turnover in the CMIP5 Earth System Models
journal, January 2015
- Koven, C. D.; Chambers, J. Q.; Georgiou, K.
- Biogeosciences, Vol. 12, Issue 17
Thermal adaptation of soil microbial respiration to elevated temperature
journal, December 2008
- Bradford, Mark A.; Davies, Christian A.; Frey, Serita D.
- Ecology Letters, Vol. 11, Issue 12
Updated high-resolution grids of monthly climatic observations - the CRU TS3.10 Dataset: UPDATED HIGH-RESOLUTION GRIDS OF MONTHLY CLIMATIC OBSERVATIONS
journal, May 2013
- Harris, I.; Jones, P. D.; Osborn, T. J.
- International Journal of Climatology, Vol. 34, Issue 3
An Enhanced Model of Land Water and Energy for Global Hydrologic and Earth-System Studies
journal, October 2014
- Milly, P. C. D.; Malyshev, Sergey L.; Shevliakova, Elena
- Journal of Hydrometeorology, Vol. 15, Issue 5
Large inert carbon pool in the terrestrial biosphere during the Last Glacial Maximum
journal, November 2011
- Ciais, P.; Tagliabue, A.; Cuntz, M.
- Nature Geoscience, Vol. 5, Issue 1
Permafrost carbon−climate feedback is sensitive to deep soil carbon decomposability but not deep soil nitrogen dynamics
journal, March 2015
- Koven, Charles D.; Lawrence, David M.; Riley, William J.
- Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
The global carbon dioxide flux in soil respiration and its relationship to vegetation and climate
journal, April 1992
- Raich, J. W.; Schlesinger, W. H.
- Tellus B, Vol. 44, Issue 2
The Northern Circumpolar Soil Carbon Database: spatially distributed datasets of soil coverage and soil carbon storage in the northern permafrost regions
journal, January 2012
- Hugelius, G.; Tarnocai, C.; Broll, G.
- Earth System Science Data Discussions, Vol. 5, Issue 2
Process-level model evaluation: a snow and heat transfer metric
journal, January 2017
- Slater, Andrew G.; Lawrence, David M.; Koven, Charles D.
- The Cryosphere, Vol. 11, Issue 2
The HadGEM2-ES implementation of CMIP5 centennial simulations
journal, January 2011
- Jones, C. D.; Hughes, J. K.; Bellouin, N.
- Geoscientific Model Development Discussions, Vol. 4, Issue 1
Works referencing / citing this record:
Increasingly Important Role of Atmospheric Aridity on Tibetan Alpine Grasslands
journal, March 2018
- Ding, Jinzhi; Yang, Tao; Zhao, Yutong
- Geophysical Research Letters, Vol. 45, Issue 6
Process-Oriented Modeling of a High Arctic Tundra Ecosystem: Long-Term Carbon Budget and Ecosystem Responses to Interannual Variations of Climate
journal, April 2018
- Zhang, Wenxin; Jansson, Per-Erik; Schurgers, Guy
- Journal of Geophysical Research: Biogeosciences, Vol. 123, Issue 4
Removal of grazers alters the response of tundra soil carbon to warming and enhanced nitrogen availability
journal, December 2019
- Ylänne, Henni; Kaarlejärvi, Elina; Väisänen, Maria
- Ecological Monographs, Vol. 90, Issue 1
New Techniques and Data for Understanding the Global Soil Respiration Flux
journal, September 2018
- Bond‐Lamberty, Ben
- Earth's Future, Vol. 6, Issue 9
The Response of Permafrost and High‐Latitude Ecosystems Under Large‐Scale Stratospheric Aerosol Injection and Its Termination
journal, June 2019
- Lee, Hanna; Ekici, Altug; Tjiputra, Jerry
- Earth's Future, Vol. 7, Issue 6
Soil Organic Matter Temperature Sensitivity Cannot be Directly Inferred From Spatial Gradients
journal, June 2019
- Abramoff, Rose Z.; Torn, Margaret S.; Georgiou, Katerina
- Global Biogeochemical Cycles, Vol. 33, Issue 6
Greenhouse Gas Production and Transport in Desert Soils of the Southwestern United States
journal, November 2018
- Oerter, Erik; Mills, Jennifer V.; Maurer, Gregory E.
- Global Biogeochemical Cycles, Vol. 32, Issue 11
Leveraging Environmental Research and Observation Networks to Advance Soil Carbon Science
journal, May 2019
- Weintraub, Samantha R.; Flores, Alejandro N.; Wieder, William R.
- Journal of Geophysical Research: Biogeosciences, Vol. 124, Issue 5
Greenhouse Gas Concentration and Volcanic Eruptions Controlled the Variability of Terrestrial Carbon Uptake Over the Last Millennium
journal, June 2019
- Zhang, Xuanze; Peng, Shushi; Ciais, Philippe
- Journal of Advances in Modeling Earth Systems, Vol. 11, Issue 6
The Community Land Model Version 5: Description of New Features, Benchmarking, and Impact of Forcing Uncertainty
journal, December 2019
- Lawrence, David M.; Fisher, Rosie A.; Koven, Charles D.
- Journal of Advances in Modeling Earth Systems, Vol. 11, Issue 12
Precipitation thresholds regulate net carbon exchange at the continental scale
journal, September 2018
- Liu, Zhihua; Ballantyne, Ashley P.; Poulter, Benjamin
- Nature Communications, Vol. 9, Issue 1
Controls of soil organic matter on soil thermal dynamics in the northern high latitudes
journal, July 2019
- Zhu, Dan; Ciais, Philippe; Krinner, Gerhard
- Nature Communications, Vol. 10, Issue 1
The influence of soil communities on the temperature sensitivity of soil respiration
journal, August 2018
- Johnston, Alice S. A.; Sibly, Richard M.
- Nature Ecology & Evolution, Vol. 2, Issue 10
Scientists’ warning to humanity: microorganisms and climate change
journal, June 2019
- Cavicchioli, Ricardo; Ripple, William J.; Timmis, Kenneth N.
- Nature Reviews Microbiology, Vol. 17, Issue 9
Temperature and moisture are minor drivers of regional-scale soil organic carbon dynamics
journal, April 2019
- González-Domínguez, B.; Niklaus, P. A.; Studer, M. S.
- Scientific Reports, Vol. 9, Issue 1
Generic parameters of first-order kinetics accurately describe soil organic matter decay in bare fallow soils over a wide edaphic and climatic range
journal, December 2019
- Menichetti, Lorenzo; Ågren, Göran I.; Barré, Pierre
- Scientific Reports, Vol. 9, Issue 1
Dependence of the evolution of carbon dynamics in the northern permafrost region on the trajectory of climate change
journal, March 2018
- McGuire, A. David; Lawrence, David M.; Koven, Charles
- Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Vol. 115, Issue 15
Opinion: Soil carbon sequestration is an elusive climate mitigation tool
journal, November 2018
- Amundson, Ronald; Biardeau, Léopold
- Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Vol. 115, Issue 46
Missing pieces to modeling the Arctic-Boreal puzzle
journal, February 2018
- Fisher, Joshua B.; Hayes, Daniel J.; Schwalm, Christopher R.
- Environmental Research Letters, Vol. 13, Issue 2
Evaluation of simulated soil carbon dynamics in Arctic-Boreal ecosystems
journal, February 2020
- Huntzinger, D. N.; Schaefer, K.; Schwalm, C.
- Environmental Research Letters, Vol. 15, Issue 2
Carbon cycle confidence and uncertainty: Exploring variation among soil biogeochemical models
journal, November 2017
- Wieder, William R.; Hartman, Melannie D.; Sulman, Benjamin N.
- Global Change Biology, Vol. 24, Issue 4
Tree mycorrhizal type predicts within-site variability in the storage and distribution of soil organic matter
journal, April 2018
- Craig, Matthew E.; Turner, Benjamin L.; Liang, Chao
- Global Change Biology, Vol. 24, Issue 8
Maximum carbon uptake rate dominates the interannual variability of global net ecosystem exchange
journal, July 2019
- Fu, Zheng; Stoy, Paul C.; Poulter, Benjamin
- Global Change Biology, Vol. 25, Issue 10
Zones of influence for soil organic matter dynamics: A conceptual framework for data and models
journal, August 2019
- Cagnarini, Claudia; Blyth, Eleanor; Emmett, Bridget A.
- Global Change Biology, Vol. 25, Issue 12
Climate warming alters subsoil but not topsoil carbon dynamics in alpine grassland
journal, October 2019
- Jia, Juan; Cao, Zhenjiao; Liu, Chengzhu
- Global Change Biology, Vol. 25, Issue 12
Biogeographic variation in temperature sensitivity of decomposition in forest soils
journal, October 2019
- Li, Jinquan; Nie, Ming; Pendall, Elise
- Global Change Biology, Vol. 26, Issue 3
A substantial role of soil erosion in the land carbon sink and its future changes
journal, February 2020
- Tan, Zeli; Leung, L. Ruby; Li, Hong‐Yi
- Global Change Biology, Vol. 26, Issue 4
Detailed global modelling of soil organic carbon in cropland, grassland and forest soils
journal, September 2019
- Morais, Tiago G.; Teixeira, Ricardo F. M.; Domingos, Tiago
- PLOS ONE, Vol. 14, Issue 9
Evaluating the simulated mean soil carbon transit times by Earth system models using observations
journal, January 2019
- Wang, Jing; Xia, Jianyang; Zhou, Xuhui
- Biogeosciences, Vol. 16, Issue 4
Alluvial record of an early Eocene hyperthermal within the Castissent Formation, the Pyrenees, Spain
journal, January 2020
- Honegger, Louis; Adatte, Thierry; Spangenberg, Jorge E.
- Climate of the Past, Vol. 16, Issue 1
Evaluation of terrestrial pan-Arctic carbon cycling using a data-assimilation system
journal, January 2019
- López-Blanco, Efrén; Exbrayat, Jean-François; Lund, Magnus
- Earth System Dynamics, Vol. 10, Issue 2
Organic carbon stocks in the Russian Chernozem: Carbon stocks of Chernozems
journal, June 2005
- Mikhailova, E. A.; Post, C. J.
- European Journal of Soil Science, Vol. 57, Issue 3
Temperature and moisture are minor drivers of regional-scale soil organic carbon dynamics
text, January 2019
- González-Domínguez, Beatriz; Niklaus, Pascal A.; Studer, Mirjam S.
- ETH Zurich
The Response of Permafrost and High‐Latitude Ecosystems under Large‐Scale Stratospheric Aerosol Injection and its Termination
text, January 2019
- Lee, Hanna; Ekici, Altug; Tjiputra, Jerry
- Wiley
Scientists’ warning to humanity: microorganisms and climate change
text, January 2019
- Cavicchioli, Ricardo; Ripple, William J.; Timmis, Kenneth N.
- ETH Zurich
Greenhouse Gas Concentration and Volcanic Eruptions Controlled the Variability of Terrestrial Carbon Uptake Over the Last Millennium
journal, June 2019
- Zhang, Xuanze; Peng, Shushi; Ciais, Philippe
- Journal of Advances in Modeling Earth Systems, Vol. 11, Issue 6
Precipitation thresholds regulate net carbon exchange at the continental scale
journal, September 2018
- Liu, Zhihua; Ballantyne, Ashley P.; Poulter, Benjamin
- Nature Communications, Vol. 9, Issue 1
A proxy-year analysis shows reduced soil temperatures with climate warming in boreal forest
journal, November 2018
- Halim, Md Abdul; Thomas, Sean C.
- Scientific Reports, Vol. 8, Issue 1
Generic parameters of first-order kinetics accurately describe soil organic matter decay in bare fallow soils over a wide edaphic and climatic range
journal, December 2019
- Menichetti, Lorenzo; Ågren, Göran I.; Barré, Pierre
- Scientific Reports, Vol. 9, Issue 1