Abstract
Climate change very likely has effects on vegetation so that trees grow faster due to carbon dioxide fertilization (a higher partial pressure increases the rate of reactions with Rubisco during photosynthesis) and that trees can be established in new territories in a warmer climate. This has far-reaching significance for the climate system mainly due to a number of feedback mechanisms still under debate. By simulating the vegetation using the Lund-Potsdam-Jena guess dynamic vegetation model, a territory in northern Russia is studied during three different climate protocols assuming a doubling of carbon dioxide levels compared to the year 1975. A back of the envelope calculation is made for the subsequent increased levels of emissions of monoterpenes from spruce and pine forests. The results show that the emissions of monoterpenes at the most northern latitudes were estimated to increase with over 500% for a four-degree centigrade increase protocol. The effect on aerosol and cloud formation is discussed and the cloud optical thickness is estimated to increase more than 2%.
Highlights
Climate change is a global problem facing humanity and at the same time it is of anthropogenic origin [1]
LPJ-GUESS can be viewed as a framework for ecosystem-modelling which has used some elements from the equilibrium terrestrial biosphere model (BIOME) family of models [29]
In this study model simulations of the vegetation in northern Russia were carried out for the climate of the year 1975 as a reference and for three possible future projections: two, three, and four-degree centigrade increase of mean global temperature and with a doubling of the atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration over 200 years
Summary
Climate change is a global problem facing humanity and at the same time it is of anthropogenic origin [1]. The mechanisms for global climate change are interlinked between all the components of planet Earth, including atmosphere, hydrosphere, and biosphere. Climate change has begun to become more and more evident, there are still large uncertainties in future projections of the climate. In order to project the evolution of the climate change, we use general circulation models (GCMs), but the accuracy of the projection is dependent on both the input data and the compliance with real processes that affect the climate. One category of processes that is of particular importance concerns feedback mechanisms. A feedback mechanism is a chain of events that in the end has an impact on the initial step, either if it is an enhancing effect, so called positive feedback, or if it has an inhibiting effect, so called negative feedback
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