Direct and Indirect Human Contributions to Terrestrial Carbon Fluxes

2004 ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 127-143 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dongmin Kim ◽  
Myong-In Lee ◽  
Eunkyo Seo

Abstract The Q10 value represents the soil respiration sensitivity to temperature often used for the parameterization of the soil decomposition process has been assumed to be a constant in conventional numerical models, whereas it exhibits significant spatial and temporal variation in the observations. This study develops a new parameterization method for determining Q10 by considering the soil respiration dependence on soil temperature and moisture obtained by multiple regression for each vegetation type. This study further investigates the impacts of the new parameterization on the global terrestrial carbon flux. Our results show that a nonuniform spatial distribution of Q10 tends to better represent the dependence of the soil respiration process on heterogeneous surface vegetation type compared with the control simulation using a uniform Q10. Moreover, it tends to improve the simulation of the relationship between soil respiration and soil temperature and moisture, particularly over cold and dry regions. The modification has an impact on the soil respiration and carbon decomposition process, which changes gross primary production (GPP) through controlling nutrient assimilation from soil to vegetation. It leads to a realistic spatial distribution of GPP, particularly over high latitudes where the original model has a significant underestimation bias. Improvement in the spatial distribution of GPP leads to a substantial reduction of global mean GPP bias compared with the in situ observation-based reference data. The results highlight that the enhanced sensitivity of soil respiration to the subsurface soil temperature and moisture introduced by the nonuniform spatial distribution of Q10 has contributed to improving the simulation of the terrestrial carbon fluxes and the global carbon cycle.


2014 ◽  
Vol 14 (11) ◽  
pp. 5807-5824 ◽  
Author(s):  
H. F. Zhang ◽  
B. Z. Chen ◽  
I. T. van der Laan-Luijk ◽  
T. Machida ◽  
H. Matsueda ◽  
...  

Abstract. Current estimates of the terrestrial carbon fluxes in Asia show large uncertainties particularly in the boreal and mid-latitudes and in China. In this paper, we present an updated carbon flux estimate for Asia ("Asia" refers to lands as far west as the Urals and is divided into boreal Eurasia, temperate Eurasia and tropical Asia based on TransCom regions) by introducing aircraft CO2 measurements from the CONTRAIL (Comprehensive Observation Network for Trace gases by Airline) program into an inversion modeling system based on the CarbonTracker framework. We estimated the averaged annual total Asian terrestrial land CO2 sink was about −1.56 Pg C yr−1 over the period 2006–2010, which offsets about one-third of the fossil fuel emission from Asia (+4.15 Pg C yr−1). The uncertainty of the terrestrial uptake estimate was derived from a set of sensitivity tests and ranged from −1.07 to −1.80 Pg C yr−1, comparable to the formal Gaussian error of ±1.18 Pg C yr−1 (1-sigma). The largest sink was found in forests, predominantly in coniferous forests (−0.64 ± 0.70 Pg C yr−1) and mixed forests (−0.14 ± 0.27 Pg C yr−1); and the second and third large carbon sinks were found in grass/shrub lands and croplands, accounting for −0.44 ± 0.48 Pg C yr−1 and −0.20 ± 0.48 Pg C yr−1, respectively. The carbon fluxes per ecosystem type have large a priori Gaussian uncertainties, and the reduction of uncertainty based on assimilation of sparse observations over Asia is modest (8.7–25.5%) for most individual ecosystems. The ecosystem flux adjustments follow the detailed a priori spatial patterns by design, which further increases the reliance on the a priori biosphere exchange model. The peak-to-peak amplitude of inter-annual variability (IAV) was 0.57 Pg C yr−1 ranging from −1.71 Pg C yr−1 to −2.28 Pg C yr−1. The IAV analysis reveals that the Asian CO2 sink was sensitive to climate variations, with the lowest uptake in 2010 concurrent with a summer flood and autumn drought and the largest CO2 sink in 2009 owing to favorable temperature and plentiful precipitation conditions. We also found the inclusion of the CONTRAIL data in the inversion modeling system reduced the uncertainty by 11% over the whole Asian region, with a large reduction in the southeast of boreal Eurasia, southeast of temperate Eurasia and most tropical Asian areas.


2019 ◽  
Vol 14 (12) ◽  
pp. 124074 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicole S Lovenduski ◽  
Gordon B Bonan ◽  
Stephen G Yeager ◽  
Keith Lindsay ◽  
Danica L Lombardozzi

2013 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 13-20 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kazuhito Ichii ◽  
Masayuki Kondo ◽  
Young-Hee Lee ◽  
Shao-Qiang Wang ◽  
Joon Kim ◽  
...  

2016 ◽  
Vol 121 (3) ◽  
pp. 903-918 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yongwen Liu ◽  
Tao Wang ◽  
Mengtian Huang ◽  
Yitong Yao ◽  
Philippe Ciais ◽  
...  

2005 ◽  
Vol 2 (5) ◽  
pp. 1283-1329 ◽  
Author(s):  
E.-D. Schulze

Abstract. This is a summary of the Vernadsky medal lecture given at the Nice EGU meeting in 2004. The lecture reviews the past (since the International Biological Program) and the future of our understanding of terrestrial carbon fluxes with focus on photosynthesis, respiration, primary, ecosystem, and biome productivity. Consideration is given to the interactions between biodiversity and biogeochemical processes.


2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eunjee Lee ◽  
Fan-Wei Zeng ◽  
Randal D. Koster ◽  
Brad Weir ◽  
Lesley E. Ott ◽  
...  

Abstract. Land carbon fluxes, e.g., gross primary production (GPP) and net biome production (NBP), are controlled in part by the responses of terrestrial ecosystems to atmospheric conditions near the Earth's surface. The Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 6 (CMIP6) has recently proposed increased spatial and temporal resolutions for the surface CO2 concentrations used to calculate GPP, and yet a comprehensive evaluation of the consequences of this increased resolution for carbon cycle dynamics is missing. Here, using global offline simulations with a terrestrial biosphere model, the sensitivity of terrestrial carbon cycle fluxes to multiple facets of the spatiotemporal variability of atmospheric CO2 is quantified. Globally, the spatial variability of CO2 is found to increase the mean global GPP by 0.2 PgC year−1, as more vegetated land areas benefit from higher CO2 concentrations induced by the inter-hemisphere gradient. The temporal variability of CO2, however, compensates for this increase, acting to reduce overall global GPP; in particular, consideration of the diurnal variability of atmospheric CO2 reduces multi-year mean global annual GPP by 0.5 PgC year−1 and net land carbon uptake by 0.1 PgC year−1. The relative contribution of the different facets of CO2 variability to GPP are found to vary regionally and seasonally, with the seasonal variation in atmospheric CO2, for example, having a notable impact on GPP in boreal regions during fall. Overall, in terms of estimating global GPP, the magnitudes of the sensitivities found here are minor, indicating that the common practice of applying spatially-uniform and annually increasing CO2 (without higher frequency temporal variability) in offline studies is a reasonable approach – the small errors induced by ignoring CO2 variability are undoubtedly swamped by other uncertainties in the offline calculations. Still, for certain regional- and seasonal-scale GPP estimations, the proper treatment of spatiotemporal CO2 variability appears important.


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