A spatial emergent constraint on the sensitivity of soil carbon turnover to global warming
- University of Exeter, Exeter (United Kingdom)
- University of Exeter, Exeter (United Kingdom); École normale supérieure (ENS), Paris (France); Institut Pierre-Simon Laplace, Guyancourt (France). Laboratoire de Météorologie Dynamique (LMD); Paris Sciences et Lettres University, Paris (France); Ecole Polytechnique, Palaiseau (France); Institut Polytechnique de Paris, Palaiseau (France); Sorbonne Univ., Paris (France)
- Met Office Hadley Centre, Exeter (United Kingdom)
- Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)
- Stockholm Univ. (Sweden)
Carbon cycle feedbacks represent large uncertainties in climate change projections, and the response of soil carbon to climate change contributes the greatest uncertainty to this. Future changes in soil carbon depend on changes in litter and root inputs from plants and especially on reductions in the turnover time of soil carbon (τs) with warming. An approximation to the latter term for the top one metre of soil (ΔCs,τ) can be diagnosed from projections made with the CMIP6 and CMIP5 Earth System Models (ESMs), and is found to span a large range even at 2 °C of global warming (-196 ± 117 PgC). Here, we present a constraint on ΔCs,τ, which makes use of current heterotrophic respiration and the spatial variability of τs inferred from observations. This spatial emergent constraint allows us to halve the uncertainty in ΔCs,τ at 2 °C to -232 ± 52 PgC.
- Research Organization:
- Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE Office of Science (SC), Biological and Environmental Research (BER); European Union (EU); Swedish Research Council (SRC)
- Grant/Contract Number:
- AC02-05CH11231; NE/R015791/1; 821003; 641816
- OSTI ID:
- 1798740
- Journal Information:
- Nature Communications, Vol. 11, Issue 1; ISSN 2041-1723
- Publisher:
- Nature Publishing GroupCopyright Statement
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
The potential for structural errors in emergent constraints
|
journal | January 2021 |
Similar Records
Global-Scale Convergence Obscures Inconsistencies in Soil Carbon Change Predicted by Earth System Models
Climate model projections from the Scenario Model Intercomparison Project (ScenarioMIP) of CMIP6