Abstract
The terrestrial ecosystem plays a vital role in regulating the exchange of carbon between land and atmosphere. This study investigates how terrestrial vegetation coverage and carbon fluxes change in a world stabilizing at 1.5 °C and 2 °C warmer than pre-industrial level. Model results derived from 20 Earth System Models (ESMs) under low, middle, and high greenhouse emission scenarios from CMIP5 and CMIP6 are employed to supply the projected results. Although the ESMs show a large spread of uncertainties, the ensemble means of global LAI are projected to increase by 0.04 ± 0.02 and 0.08 ± 0.04 in the 1.5 and 2.0 °C warming worlds, respectively. Vegetation density is projected to decrease only in the Brazilian Highlands due to the decrease of precipitation there. The high latitudes in Eurasia are projected to have stronger increase of LAI in the 2.0 °C warming world compared to that in 1.5 °C warming level caused by the increase of tree coverage. The largest zonal LAI is projected around 70° N while the largest zonal NPP is projected around 60° N and equator. The zonally inhomogeneous increase of vegetation density and productivity relates to the zonally inhomogeneous increase of temperature, which in turn could amplify the latitudinal gradient of temperature with additional warming. Most of the ESMs show uniform increases of global averaged NPP by 10.68 ± 8.60 and 15.42 ± 10.90 PgC year−1 under 1.5 °C and 2.0 °C warming levels, respectively, except in some sparse vegetation areas. The ensemble averaged NEE is projected to increase by 3.80 ± 7.72 and 4.83 ± 10.13 PgC year−1 in the two warming worlds. The terrestrial ecosystem over most of the world could be a stronger carbon sink than at present. However, some dry areas in Amazon and Central Africa may convert to carbon sources in a world with additional 0.5 °C warming. The start of the growing season in the northern high latitudes is projected to advance by less than one month earlier. Five out of 10 CMIP6 ESMs, which use the Land Use Harmonization Project (LUH2) dataset or a prescribed potential vegetation distribution to constrain the future change of vegetation types, do not reduce the model uncertainties in projected LAI and terrestrial carbon fluxes. This may suggest the challenge in optimizing the carbon fluxes modeling in the future.
Highlights
Noted that the CMIP5 and CMIP6 models are not consistent on the Considering the future changes of leaf area index (LAI) vary from region to region, six areas from the tropical to sub-arctic zone were selected to investigate the monthly variations of future changes (Figure 9)
Our analysis indicates that CMIP5 Earth System Models (ESMs) are the mainly contribution to simulated LAI increase and the CMIP5-projected magnitudes of increases in carbon fluxes are mostly larger than those by the CMIP6 models
This study investigates how terrestrial vegetation and carbon fluxes change under the two warming scenarios (1.5 ◦ C and 2 ◦ C) relevant to the Paris temperature targets
Summary
The representation of vegetation dynamics in different land models could introduce additional uncertainties for the future projection of terrestrial carbon fluxes [32]. It is more reliable using the ensemble of model results to supply the future changes of variables with the model extensions. More CMIP6 than CMIP5 models incorporate the terrestrial ecosystem or global dynamic vegetation component, supplying us more members of model projections in exploring the possible future change of terrestrial vegetation and carbon fluxes. We compare the simulation results of CMIP6 ESMs to the CMIP5 models and try to investigate the differences of the two groups of models in supplying the projected terrestrial vegetation and carbon fluxes
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