Warm-season net CO2 uptake outweighs cold-season emissions over Alaskan North Slope tundra under current and RCP8.5 climate
Arctic warming has increased vegetation growth and soil respiration during recent decades. The rate of Arctic warming will likely amplify over the 21st century. Previous studies have revealed that the most severe Arctic warming occurred during the cold season (September to May). The cold-season warm...
Published in: | Environmental Research Letters |
---|---|
Main Authors: | , , , |
Format: | Article in Journal/Newspaper |
Language: | English |
Published: |
IOP Publishing
2021
|
Subjects: | |
Online Access: | https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/abf6f5 https://doaj.org/article/a151bfa03313498aa9a0edf499a3e938 |
id |
ftdoajarticles:oai:doaj.org/article:a151bfa03313498aa9a0edf499a3e938 |
---|---|
record_format |
openpolar |
spelling |
ftdoajarticles:oai:doaj.org/article:a151bfa03313498aa9a0edf499a3e938 2023-09-05T13:16:33+02:00 Warm-season net CO2 uptake outweighs cold-season emissions over Alaskan North Slope tundra under current and RCP8.5 climate Jing Tao Qing Zhu William J Riley Rebecca B Neumann 2021-01-01T00:00:00Z https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/abf6f5 https://doaj.org/article/a151bfa03313498aa9a0edf499a3e938 EN eng IOP Publishing https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/abf6f5 https://doaj.org/toc/1748-9326 doi:10.1088/1748-9326/abf6f5 1748-9326 https://doaj.org/article/a151bfa03313498aa9a0edf499a3e938 Environmental Research Letters, Vol 16, Iss 5, p 055012 (2021) soil respiration carbon budget Alaskan Arctic tundra tundra plant resilience hydroclimatic extremes E3SM land model (ELM) Environmental technology. Sanitary engineering TD1-1066 Environmental sciences GE1-350 Science Q Physics QC1-999 article 2021 ftdoajarticles https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/abf6f5 2023-08-13T00:37:14Z Arctic warming has increased vegetation growth and soil respiration during recent decades. The rate of Arctic warming will likely amplify over the 21st century. Previous studies have revealed that the most severe Arctic warming occurred during the cold season (September to May). The cold-season warming has posited significant CO _2 emissions to the atmosphere via respiration, possibly offsetting warm-season (June to August) net CO _2 uptake. However, prevailing Earth system land models poorly represent cold-season CO _2 emissions, making estimates of Arctic tundra annual CO _2 budgets highly uncertain. Here, we demonstrate that an improved version of the energy exascale Earth system model (E3SM) land model (ELMv1-ECA) captures the large amount of cold-season CO _2 emissions over Alaskan Arctic tundra as reported by two independent, observationally-constrained datasets. We found that the recent seven-decades warming trend of cold-season soil temperature is three times that of the warm-season. The climate sensitivity of warm-season net CO _2 uptake, however, is threefold higher than for the cold-season net CO _2 loss, mainly due to stronger plant resilience than microbial resilience to hydroclimatic extremes. Consequently, the modeled warm-season net CO _2 uptake has a larger positive trend (0.74 ± 0.14 gC m ^−2 yr ^−1 ) than that of cold-season CO _2 emissions (0.64 ± 0.11 gC m ^−2 yr ^−1 ) from 1950 to 2017, supported by enhanced plant nutrient uptake and increased light- and water-use efficiency. With continued warming and elevated CO _2 concentrations under the representative concentration pathway (RCP) 8.5 scenario, the increasing rate of warm-season net CO _2 uptake is more than twice the rate of cold-season emissions (1.33 ± 0.32 gC m ^−2 yr ^−1 vs 0.50 ± 0.12 gC m ^−2 yr ^−1 ), making the modeled Alaskan Arctic tundra ecosystem a net CO _2 sink by 2100. However, other geomorphological and ecological disturbances (e.g. abrupt permafrost thaw, thermokarst development, landscape-scale hydrological changes, ... Article in Journal/Newspaper Arctic permafrost Thermokarst Tundra Directory of Open Access Journals: DOAJ Articles Arctic Environmental Research Letters 16 5 055012 |
institution |
Open Polar |
collection |
Directory of Open Access Journals: DOAJ Articles |
op_collection_id |
ftdoajarticles |
language |
English |
topic |
soil respiration carbon budget Alaskan Arctic tundra tundra plant resilience hydroclimatic extremes E3SM land model (ELM) Environmental technology. Sanitary engineering TD1-1066 Environmental sciences GE1-350 Science Q Physics QC1-999 |
spellingShingle |
soil respiration carbon budget Alaskan Arctic tundra tundra plant resilience hydroclimatic extremes E3SM land model (ELM) Environmental technology. Sanitary engineering TD1-1066 Environmental sciences GE1-350 Science Q Physics QC1-999 Jing Tao Qing Zhu William J Riley Rebecca B Neumann Warm-season net CO2 uptake outweighs cold-season emissions over Alaskan North Slope tundra under current and RCP8.5 climate |
topic_facet |
soil respiration carbon budget Alaskan Arctic tundra tundra plant resilience hydroclimatic extremes E3SM land model (ELM) Environmental technology. Sanitary engineering TD1-1066 Environmental sciences GE1-350 Science Q Physics QC1-999 |
description |
Arctic warming has increased vegetation growth and soil respiration during recent decades. The rate of Arctic warming will likely amplify over the 21st century. Previous studies have revealed that the most severe Arctic warming occurred during the cold season (September to May). The cold-season warming has posited significant CO _2 emissions to the atmosphere via respiration, possibly offsetting warm-season (June to August) net CO _2 uptake. However, prevailing Earth system land models poorly represent cold-season CO _2 emissions, making estimates of Arctic tundra annual CO _2 budgets highly uncertain. Here, we demonstrate that an improved version of the energy exascale Earth system model (E3SM) land model (ELMv1-ECA) captures the large amount of cold-season CO _2 emissions over Alaskan Arctic tundra as reported by two independent, observationally-constrained datasets. We found that the recent seven-decades warming trend of cold-season soil temperature is three times that of the warm-season. The climate sensitivity of warm-season net CO _2 uptake, however, is threefold higher than for the cold-season net CO _2 loss, mainly due to stronger plant resilience than microbial resilience to hydroclimatic extremes. Consequently, the modeled warm-season net CO _2 uptake has a larger positive trend (0.74 ± 0.14 gC m ^−2 yr ^−1 ) than that of cold-season CO _2 emissions (0.64 ± 0.11 gC m ^−2 yr ^−1 ) from 1950 to 2017, supported by enhanced plant nutrient uptake and increased light- and water-use efficiency. With continued warming and elevated CO _2 concentrations under the representative concentration pathway (RCP) 8.5 scenario, the increasing rate of warm-season net CO _2 uptake is more than twice the rate of cold-season emissions (1.33 ± 0.32 gC m ^−2 yr ^−1 vs 0.50 ± 0.12 gC m ^−2 yr ^−1 ), making the modeled Alaskan Arctic tundra ecosystem a net CO _2 sink by 2100. However, other geomorphological and ecological disturbances (e.g. abrupt permafrost thaw, thermokarst development, landscape-scale hydrological changes, ... |
format |
Article in Journal/Newspaper |
author |
Jing Tao Qing Zhu William J Riley Rebecca B Neumann |
author_facet |
Jing Tao Qing Zhu William J Riley Rebecca B Neumann |
author_sort |
Jing Tao |
title |
Warm-season net CO2 uptake outweighs cold-season emissions over Alaskan North Slope tundra under current and RCP8.5 climate |
title_short |
Warm-season net CO2 uptake outweighs cold-season emissions over Alaskan North Slope tundra under current and RCP8.5 climate |
title_full |
Warm-season net CO2 uptake outweighs cold-season emissions over Alaskan North Slope tundra under current and RCP8.5 climate |
title_fullStr |
Warm-season net CO2 uptake outweighs cold-season emissions over Alaskan North Slope tundra under current and RCP8.5 climate |
title_full_unstemmed |
Warm-season net CO2 uptake outweighs cold-season emissions over Alaskan North Slope tundra under current and RCP8.5 climate |
title_sort |
warm-season net co2 uptake outweighs cold-season emissions over alaskan north slope tundra under current and rcp8.5 climate |
publisher |
IOP Publishing |
publishDate |
2021 |
url |
https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/abf6f5 https://doaj.org/article/a151bfa03313498aa9a0edf499a3e938 |
geographic |
Arctic |
geographic_facet |
Arctic |
genre |
Arctic permafrost Thermokarst Tundra |
genre_facet |
Arctic permafrost Thermokarst Tundra |
op_source |
Environmental Research Letters, Vol 16, Iss 5, p 055012 (2021) |
op_relation |
https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/abf6f5 https://doaj.org/toc/1748-9326 doi:10.1088/1748-9326/abf6f5 1748-9326 https://doaj.org/article/a151bfa03313498aa9a0edf499a3e938 |
op_doi |
https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/abf6f5 |
container_title |
Environmental Research Letters |
container_volume |
16 |
container_issue |
5 |
container_start_page |
055012 |
_version_ |
1776198091904385024 |