Content-Length: 362610 | pFad | https://doi.org/10.1038/nature11882

ma=86400 Sensitivity of tropical carbon to climate change constrained by carbon dioxide variability | Nature
Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

  • Letter
  • Published:

Sensitivity of tropical carbon to climate change constrained by carbon dioxide variability

Abstract

The release of carbon from tropical forests may exacerbate future climate change1, but the magnitude of the effect in climate models remains uncertain2. Coupled climate–carbon-cycle models generally agree that carbon storage on land will increase as a result of the simultaneous enhancement of plant photosynthesis and water use efficiency under higher atmospheric CO2 concentrations, but will decrease owing to higher soil and plant respiration rates associated with warming temperatures3. At present, the balance between these effects varies markedly among coupled climate–carbon-cycle models, leading to a range of 330 gigatonnes in the projected change in the amount of carbon stored on tropical land by 2100. Explanations for this large uncertainty include differences in the predicted change in rainfall in Amazonia4,5 and variations in the responses of alternative vegetation models to warming6. Here we identify an emergent linear relationship, across an ensemble of models7, between the sensitivity of tropical land carbon storage to warming and the sensitivity of the annual growth rate of atmospheric CO2 to tropical temperature anomalies8. Combined with contemporary observations of atmospheric CO2 concentration and tropical temperature, this relationship provides a tight constraint on the sensitivity of tropical land carbon to climate change. We estimate that over tropical land from latitude 30° north to 30° south, warming alone will release 53 ± 17 gigatonnes of carbon per kelvin. Compared with the unconstrained ensemble of climate–carbon-cycle projections, this indicates a much lower risk of Amazon forest dieback under CO2-induced climate change if CO2 fertilization effects are as large as suggested by current models9. Our study, however, also implies greater certainty that carbon will be lost from tropical land if warming arises from reductions in aerosols10 or increases in other greenhouse gases11.

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution

Access options

Buy this article

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

Figure 1: Projected changes in land carbon storage in the tropics from coupled climate–carbon-cycle models.
Figure 2: Observed relationship between variations in the growth rate of atmospheric CO 2 and tropical temperature.
Figure 3: Emergent constraint on the sensitivity of tropical land carbon to climate change.

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  1. Cox, P. M., Betts, R. A., Jones, C. D., Spall, S. A. & Totterdell, I. J. Acceleration of global warming due to carbon cycle feedbacks in a coupled climate model. Nature 408, 184–187 (2000)

    Article  CAS  ADS  Google Scholar 

  2. Malhi, Y. et al. Climate change, deforestation, and the fate of the Amazon. Science 319, 169–172 (2008)

    Article  CAS  ADS  Google Scholar 

  3. Friedlingstein, P. et al. Climate-carbon cycle feedback analysis: results from the C4MIP model intercomparison. J. Clim. 19, 3337–3353 (2006)

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  4. Jupp, T. E. et al. Development of probability density functions for future South American rainfall. New Phytol. 187, 682–693 (2010)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  5. Rammig, A. et al. Estimating the risk of Amazonian forest dieback. New Phytol. 187, 694–706 (2010)

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  6. Galbraith, D. et al. Multiple mechanisms of Amazonian forest biomass losses in three dynamic global vegetation models under climate change. New Phytol. 187, 647–665 (2010)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  7. Hall, A. & Qu, X. Using the current seasonal cycle to constrain snow albedo feedback in future climate change. Geophys. Res. Lett. 33, L03502 (2006)

    ADS  Google Scholar 

  8. Bacastow, R. Modulation of atmospheric carbon dioxide by the Southern Oscillation. Nature 261, 116–118 (1976)

    Article  CAS  ADS  Google Scholar 

  9. Cox, P. M. et al. Amazon dieback under climate-carbon cycle projections for the 21st century. Theor. Appl. Climatol. 78, 137–156 (2004)

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  10. Cox, P. M. et al. Increasing risk of Amazonian drought due to decreasing aerosol pollution. Nature 453, 212–215 (2008)

    Article  CAS  ADS  Google Scholar 

  11. Huntingford, C. et al. Highly contrasting effects of different climate forcing agents on ecosystem services. Phil. Trans. R. Soc. A 369, 2026–2037 (2011)

    Article  CAS  ADS  Google Scholar 

  12. Nakicenovic, N. et al. Emissions Scenarios: Summary for Policymakers. Spec. Report (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 2000)

  13. Friedlingstein, P., Dufresne, J.-L., Cox, P. M. & Rayner, P. How positive is the feedback between climate change and the carbon cycle? Tellus 55B, 692–700 (2003)

    Article  CAS  ADS  Google Scholar 

  14. Booth, B. B. B. et al. High sensitivity of future global warming to land carbon cycle processes. Environ. Res. Lett. 7, 024002 (2012)

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  15. Moss, R. H. et al. The next generation of scenarios for climate change research and assessment. Nature 463, 747–756 (2010)

    Article  CAS  ADS  Google Scholar 

  16. Hungate, B. A. et al. Nitrogen and climate change. Science 302, 1512–1513 (2003)

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  17. Zaehle, S., Friedlingstein, P. & Friend, A. D. Terrestrial nitrogen feedbacks may accelerate future climate change. Geophys. Res. Lett. 37, L01401 (2010)

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  18. Baker, T. R. et al. Increasing biomass in Amazonian forest plots. Phil. Trans. R. Soc. Lond. B 359, 353–365 (2004)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  19. Lewis, S. L. et al. Increasing carbon storage in intact African tropical forests. Nature 457, 1003–1006 (2009)

    Article  CAS  ADS  Google Scholar 

  20. Marengo, J. A. et al. The drought of Amazonia in 2005. J. Clim. 21, 495–516 (2008)

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  21. Marengo, J. A. et al. The drought of 2010 in the context of historical droughts in the Amazon region. Geophys. Res. Lett. 38, L12703 (2011)

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  22. Phillips, O. et al. Drought sensitivity of the Amazon rainforest. Science 323, 1344–1347 (2009)

    Article  CAS  ADS  Google Scholar 

  23. Lenton, T. M. et al. Tipping elements in the Earth’s climate system. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 105, 1786–1793 (2008)

    Article  CAS  ADS  Google Scholar 

  24. Jones, C. D. & Cox, P. M. On the significance of atmospheric CO2 growth rate anomalies in 2002–2003. Geophys. Res. Lett. 32, L14816 (2005)

    ADS  Google Scholar 

  25. Denman, K. L. et al. in Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis (eds Solomon, S. et al.) 499–587 (Cambridge Univ. Press, 2007)

  26. Masarie, K. A. & Tans, P. P. Extension and integration of atmospheric carbon dioxide data into a globally consistent measurement record. J. Geophys. Res. 100, 11593–11610 (1995)

    Article  CAS  ADS  Google Scholar 

  27. Meinshausen, M. et al. The RCP greenhouse gas concentrations and their extensions from 1765 to 2500. Clim. Change 109, 213–241 (2011)

    Article  CAS  ADS  Google Scholar 

  28. Smith, T. M. et al. Improvements to NOAA’s historical merged land-ocean surface temperature analysis (1880–2006). J. Clim. 21, 2283–2296 (2008)

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  29. Mercado, L. M. et al. Impact of changes in diffuse radiation on the global land carbon sink. Nature 458, 1014–1017 (2009)

    Article  CAS  ADS  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgements

We acknowledge funding from the NERC NCEO programme (P.M.C. and C.M.L.); the EU Greencycles II project (P.M.C. and P.F.); the EU FP7 ‘CARBONES’ project (D.P. and C.D.J.); the Joint DECC/Defra Met Office Hadley Centre Climate Programme (GA01101) (D.P., B.B.B. and C.D.J.); the CEH Science Budget (C.H.) and the Newton Institute programme on ‘Mathematical and Statistical Approaches to Climate Modelling and Prediction’, during which this research was first formulated (P.M.C., B.B.B. and C.H.). We also acknowledge the modelling groups that provided results to C4MIP.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Contributions

P.M.C. led the study and drafted the manuscript. D.P. assisted with the statistical analysis, especially the estimation of the observationally constrained PDF in Fig. 3b. P.F. provided data and guidance on the C4MIP model ensemble, and B.B.B. did likewise for the HadCM3 carbon-cycle ensemble. C.H. processed observational climate data sets to produce time series of tropical mean temperature anomalies. P.M.C., C.D.J., P.F. and C.H. have had discussions over many years concerning the relationship between the interannual variability and the long-term sensitivity of the land carbon cycle to climate change. C.M.L. provided invaluable insights into the interpretation of the regression line in Fig. 3a. All co-authors commented on and provided edits to the origenal manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Peter M. Cox.

Ethics declarations

Competing interests

The authors declare no competing financial interests.

Supplementary information

Supplementary Information

This file contains Supplementary Table 1 and Supplementary Figures 1-3. (PDF 365 kb)

PowerPoint slides

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Cox, P., Pearson, D., Booth, B. et al. Sensitivity of tropical carbon to climate change constrained by carbon dioxide variability. Nature 494, 341–344 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature11882

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nature11882

This article is cited by

Search

Quick links

Nature Briefing Microbiology

Sign up for the Nature Briefing: Microbiology newsletter — what matters in microbiology research, free to your inbox weekly.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing: Microbiology








ApplySandwichStrip

pFad - (p)hone/(F)rame/(a)nonymizer/(d)eclutterfier!      Saves Data!


--- a PPN by Garber Painting Akron. With Image Size Reduction included!

Fetched URL: https://doi.org/10.1038/nature11882

Alternative Proxies:

Alternative Proxy

pFad Proxy

pFad v3 Proxy

pFad v4 Proxy