The impacts of modelling prescribed vs. dynamic land cover in a high CO2 future scenario – greening of the Arctic and Amazonian dieback
Terrestrial biosphere models are a key tool in investigating the role played by the land surface in the global climate system. However, few models simulate the geographic distribution of biomes dynamically, opting to prescribe them instead using remote sensing products. While prescribing land cover...
| Main Authors: | , , , |
|---|---|
| Format: | Text |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
2023
|
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2023-2711 https://egusphere.copernicus.org/preprints/2023/egusphere-2023-2711/ |
| Summary: | Terrestrial biosphere models are a key tool in investigating the role played by the land surface in the global climate system. However, few models simulate the geographic distribution of biomes dynamically, opting to prescribe them instead using remote sensing products. While prescribing land cover still allows for the simulation of the impacts of climate change on vegetation growth as well as the impacts of land use change, it prevents the simulation of climate change-driven biome shifts, with implications for projecting the future terrestrial carbon sink. Here, we isolate the impacts of prescribed vs. dynamic land cover implementations in a terrestrial biosphere model. We first introduce a framework for evaluating dynamic land cover (i.e., the spatial distribution of plant functional types across the land surface), which can be applied across terrestrial biosphere models alongside standard benchmarking of energy, water, and carbon cycle variables. After establishing confidence in simulated land cover, we then show that the simulated terrestrial carbon sink differs significantly between simulations with dynamic vs. prescribed land cover for a high CO 2 future scenario. This is because of important range shifts that are only simulated when dynamic land cover is implemented: tree expansion into the Arctic and Amazonian transition from forest to grassland. In particular, the projected net land-atmosphere CO 2 flux at the end of the 21 st century is twice as large in simulations with dynamic land cover than in simulations with prescribed land cover. Our results illustrate the importance of climate change-driven biome shifts for projecting the future terrestrial carbon sink. |
|---|