Search Results
A multi-model analysis of risk of ecosystem shifts under climate change
2013, Warszawski, Lila, Friend, Andrew, Ostberg, Sebastian, Frieler, Katja, Lucht, Wolfgang, Schaphoff, Sibyll, Beerling, David, Cadule, Patricia, Ciais, Philippe, Clark, Douglas B., Kahana, Ron, Ito, Akihiko, Keribin, Rozenn, Kleidon, Axel, Lomas, Mark, Nishina, Kazuya, Pavlick, Ryan, Rademacher, Tim Tito, Buechner, Matthias, Piontek, Franziska, Schewe, Jacob, Serdeczny, Olivia, Schellnhuber, Hans Joachim
Climate change may pose a high risk of change to Earth's ecosystems: shifting climatic boundaries may induce changes in the biogeochemical functioning and structures of ecosystems that render it difficult for endemic plant and animal species to survive in their current habitats. Here we aggregate changes in the biogeochemical ecosystem state as a proxy for the risk of these shifts at different levels of global warming. Estimates are based on simulations from seven global vegetation models (GVMs) driven by future climate scenarios, allowing for a quantification of the related uncertainties. 5–19% of the naturally vegetated land surface is projected to be at risk of severe ecosystem change at 2 ° C of global warming (ΔGMT) above 1980–2010 levels. However, there is limited agreement across the models about which geographical regions face the highest risk of change. The extent of regions at risk of severe ecosystem change is projected to rise with ΔGMT, approximately doubling between ΔGMT = 2 and 3 ° C, and reaching a median value of 35% of the naturally vegetated land surface for ΔGMT = 4 °C. The regions projected to face the highest risk of severe ecosystem changes above ΔGMT = 4 °C or earlier include the tundra and shrublands of the Tibetan Plateau, grasslands of eastern India, the boreal forests of northern Canada and Russia, the savanna region in the Horn of Africa, and the Amazon rainforest.
Benchmarking carbon fluxes of the ISIMIP2a biome models
2017, Chang, Jinfeng, Ciais, Philippe, Wang, Xuhui, Piao, Shilong, Asrar, Ghassem, Betts, Richard, Chevallier, Frédéric, Dury, Marie, François, Louis, Frieler, Katja, Ros, Anselmo GarcÃa Cantú, Henrot, Alexandra-Jane, Hickler, Thomas, Ito, Akihiko, Morfopoulos, Catherine, Munhoven, Guy, Nishina, Kazuya, Ostberg, Sebastian, Pan, Shufen, Peng, Shushi, Rafique, Rashid, Reyer, Christopher, Rödenbeck, Christian, Schaphoff, Sibyll, Steinkamp, Jörg, Tian, Hanqin, Viovy, Nicolas, Yang, Jia, Zeng, Ning, Zhao, Fang
The purpose of this study is to evaluate the eight ISIMIP2a biome models against independent estimates of long-term net carbon fluxes (i.e. Net Biome Productivity, NBP) over terrestrial ecosystems for the recent four decades (1971–2010). We evaluate modeled global NBP against 1) the updated global residual land sink (RLS) plus land use emissions (E LUC) from the Global Carbon Project (GCP), presented as R + L in this study by Le Quéré et al (2015), and 2) the land CO2 fluxes from two atmospheric inversion systems: Jena CarboScope s81_v3.8 and CAMS v15r2, referred to as F Jena and F CAMS respectively. The model ensemble-mean NBP (that includes seven models with land-use change) is higher than but within the uncertainty of R + L, while the simulated positive NBP trend over the last 30 yr is lower than that from R + L and from the two inversion systems. ISIMIP2a biome models well capture the interannual variation of global net terrestrial ecosystem carbon fluxes. Tropical NBP represents 31 ± 17% of global total NBP during the past decades, and the year-to-year variation of tropical NBP contributes most of the interannual variation of global NBP. According to the models, increasing Net Primary Productivity (NPP) was the main cause for the generally increasing NBP. Significant global NBP anomalies from the long-term mean between the two phases of El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) events are simulated by all models (p < 0.05), which is consistent with the R + L estimate (p = 0.06), also mainly attributed to NPP anomalies, rather than to changes in heterotrophic respiration (Rh). The global NPP and NBP anomalies during ENSO events are dominated by their anomalies in tropical regions impacted by tropical climate variability. Multiple regressions between R + L, F Jena and F CAMS interannual variations and tropical climate variations reveal a significant negative response of global net terrestrial ecosystem carbon fluxes to tropical mean annual temperature variation, and a non-significant response to tropical annual precipitation variation. According to the models, tropical precipitation is a more important driver, suggesting that some models do not capture the roles of precipitation and temperature changes adequately.
The role of storage dynamics in annual wheat prices
2017, Schewe, Jacob, Otto, Christian, Frieler, Katja, Bodirsky, Benjamin Leo, Kriegler, Elmar, Lotze-Campen, Hermann, Popp, Alexander
Identifying the drivers of global crop price fluctuations is essential for estimating the risks of unexpected weather-induced production shortfalls and for designing optimal response measures. Here we show that with a consistent representation of storage dynamics, a simple supply–demand model can explain most of the observed variations in wheat prices over the last 40 yr solely based on time series of annual production and long term demand trends. Even the most recent price peaks in 2007/08 and 2010/11 can be explained by additionally accounting for documented changes in countries' trade policies and storage strategies, without the need for external drivers such as oil prices or speculation across different commodity or stock markets. This underlines the critical sensitivity of global prices to fluctuations in production. The consistent inclusion of storage into a dynamic supply-demand model closes an important gap when it comes to exploring potential responses to future crop yield variability under climate and land-use change.