Variations and trends of terrestrial NPP and its relation to climate change in the 10 CMIP5 models

Abstract

Using global terrestrial ecosystem net primary productivity (NPP) data, we validated the simulated multi-model ensemble (MME) NPP, analyzed the spatial distribution of global NPP and explored the relationship between NPP and climate variations in historical scenarios of 10 CMIP5 models. The results show that the global spatial pattern of simulated terrestrial ecosystem NPP, is consistent with IGBP NPP, but the values have some differences and there is a huge uncertainty. Considering global climate change, near surface temperature is the major factor affecting the terrestrial ecosystem, followed by the precipitation. This means terrestrial ecosystem NPP is more closely related to near surface temperature than precipitation. Between 1976 and 2005, NPP shows an obvious increasing temporal trend, indicating the terrestrial ecosystem has had a positive response to climate change. MME NPP has increased 3.647PgC during historical period, which shows an increasing temporal trend of 3.9 gCm−2∙100 yr−2 in the past 150 years, also indicating that the terrestrial ecosystem has shown a positive response to climate change in past 150 years.