scholarly journals Quantifying the effect of vegetation dynamics on the climate of the Last Glacial Maximum

2005 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-7 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. Jahn ◽  
M. Claussen ◽  
A. Ganopolski ◽  
V. Brovkin

Abstract. The importance of the biogeophysical atmosphere-vegetation feedback in comparison with the radiative effect of lower atmospheric CO2 concentrations and the presence of ice sheets at the last glacial maximum (LGM) is investigated with the climate system model CLIMBER-2. Equilibrium experiments reveal that most of the global cooling at the LGM (-5.1°C) relative to (natural) present-day conditions is caused by the introduction of ice sheets into the model (-3.0°C), followed by the effect of lower atmospheric CO2 levels at the LGM (-1.5°C), while a synergy between these two factors appears to be very small on global average. The biogeophysical effects of changes in vegetation cover are found to cool the global LGM climate by 0.6°C. The latter are most pronounced in the northern high latitudes, where the taiga-tundra feedback causes annually averaged temperature changes of up to -2.0°C, while the radiative effect of lower atmospheric CO2 in this region only produces a cooling of 1.5°C. Hence, in this region, the temperature changes caused by vegetation dynamics at the LGM exceed the cooling due to lower atmospheric CO2 concentrations.

2005 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-16 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. Jahn ◽  
M. Claussen ◽  
A. Ganopolski ◽  
V. Brovkin

Abstract. The importance of the biogeophysical atmosphere-vegetation feedback in comparison with the radiative effect of lower atmospheric CO2 concentrations and the presence of ice sheets at the last glacial maximum (LGM) is investigated with the climate system model CLIMBER-2. Equilibrium experiments reveal that most of the global cooling at the LGM (−5.1°C) relative to present-day conditions is caused by the introduction of ice sheets into the model (−3.0°C, 59%), followed by the effect of lower atmospheric CO2 levels at the LGM (−1.5°C, 29%). The biogeophysical effects of changes in vegetation cover are found to cool the LGM climate by 0.6°C (12%). They are most pronounced in the northern high latitudes, where the taiga-tundra feedback causes annually averaged temperature changes of up to −2°C, while the radiative effect of lower atmospheric CO2 in this region only produces a cooling of 1.5°C. Hence, in this region, the temperature changes caused by vegetation dynamics at the LGM exceed the cooling due to lower atmospheric CO2 concentrations.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lauren Gregoire ◽  
Niall Gandy ◽  
Lachlan Astfalck ◽  
Robin Smith ◽  
Ruza Ivanovic ◽  
...  

<p>Simulating the co-evolution of climate and ice-sheets during the Quaternary is key to understanding some of the major abrupt changes in climate, ice and sea level. Indeed, events such as the Meltwater pulse 1a rapid sea level rise and Heinrich, Dansgaard–Oeschger and the 8.2 kyr climatic events all involve the interplay between ice sheets, the atmosphere and the ocean. Unfortunately, it is challenging to simulate the coupled Climate-Ice sheet system because small biases, errors or uncertainties in parts of the models are strongly amplified by the powerful interactions between the atmosphere and ice (e.g. ice-albedo and height-mass balance feedbacks). This leads to inaccurate or even unrealistic simulations of ice sheet extent and surface climate. To overcome this issue we need some methods to effectively explore the uncertainty in the complex Climate-Ice sheet system and reduce model biases. Here we present our approach to produce ensemble of coupled Climate-Ice sheet simulations of the Last Glacial maximum that explore the uncertainties in climate and ice sheet processes.</p><p>We use the FAMOUS-ICE earth system model, which comprises a coarse-resolution and fast general circulation model coupled to the Glimmer-CISM ice sheet model. We prescribe sea surface temperature and sea ice concentrations in order to control and reduce biases in polar climate, which strongly affect the surface mass balance and simulated extent of the northern hemisphere ice sheets. We develop and apply a method to reconstruct and sample a range of realistic sea surface temperature and sea-ice concentration spatio-temporal field. These are created by merging information from PMIP3/4 climate simulations and proxy-data for sea surface temperatures at the Last Glacial Maximum with Bayes linear analysis. We then use these to generate ensembles of FAMOUS-ice simulations of the Last Glacial maximum following the PMIP4 protocol, with the Greenland and North American ice sheets interactively simulated. In addition to exploring a range of sea surface conditions, we also vary key parameters that control the surface mass balance and flow of ice sheets. We thus produce ensembles of simulations that will later be used to emulate ice sheet surface mass balance.  </p>


1997 ◽  
Vol 25 ◽  
pp. 145-152 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gilles Ramstein ◽  
Adeline Fabre ◽  
Sophie Pinot ◽  
Catherine Ritz ◽  
Sylvie Joussaume

In the framework of the Paleoclimate Modelling Intercomparison Project (PMIP), simulations of the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) have- been performed. More than 10 different atmospheric general circulation models (AGCMs) have been used with the same boundary conditions: sea-surface temperatures prescribed by CLIMAP (1981), ice-sheet reconstruction provided by Peltier (1994), change in insolation, and reduced CO2 content. One of the major questions is to investigate whether the simulations of the LGM are in equilibrium with the prescribed ice-sheet reconstruction. To answer this question, we have used two different approaches. First, we analyze the results of a sel of LGM simulations performed with different versions of the Laboratoire de Meteorolo-gie Dynamique (LMD) AGCM and study the hydrologic and snow- budgets over the Laurcntide and Fennoscandian ice sheets. Second, we use the AGCM outputs to force an ice-sheet model in order to investigate its ability to maintain the ice sheets as reconstructed by CLIMAP (1981) or Peltier (1994).


2013 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
pp. 1571-1587 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. O'ishi ◽  
A. Abe-Ouchi

Abstract. When the climate is reconstructed from paleoevidence, it shows that the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM, ca. 21 000 yr ago) is cold and dry compared to the present-day. Reconstruction also shows that compared to today, the vegetation of the LGM is less active and the distribution of vegetation was drastically different, due to cold temperature, dryness, and a lower level of atmospheric CO2 concentration (185 ppm compared to a preindustrial level of 285 ppm). In the present paper, we investigate the influence of vegetation change on the climate of the LGM by using a coupled atmosphere-ocean-vegetation general circulation model (AOVGCM, the MIROC-LPJ). The MIROC-LPJ is different from earlier studies in the introduction of a bias correction method in individual running GCM experiments. We examined four GCM experiments (LGM and preindustrial, with and without vegetation feedback) and quantified the strength of the vegetation feedback during the LGM. The result shows that global-averaged cooling during the LGM is amplified by +13.5 % due to the introduction of vegetation feedback. This is mainly caused by the increase of land surface albedo due to the expansion of tundra in northern high latitudes and the desertification in northern middle latitudes around 30° N to 60° N. We also investigated how this change in climate affected the total terrestrial carbon storage by using offline Lund-Potsdam-Jena dynamic global vegetation model (LPJ-DGVM). Our result shows that the total terrestrial carbon storage was reduced by 597 PgC during the LGM, which corresponds to the emission of 282 ppm atmospheric CO2. In the LGM experiments, the global carbon distribution is generally the same whether the vegetation feedback to the atmosphere is included or not. However, the inclusion of vegetation feedback causes substantial terrestrial carbon storage change, especially in explaining the lowering of atmospheric CO2 during the LGM.


Nature ◽  
10.1038/29695 ◽  
1998 ◽  
Vol 394 (6696) ◽  
pp. 847-853 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew J. Weaver ◽  
Michael Eby ◽  
Augustus F. Fanning ◽  
Edward C. Wiebe

1998 ◽  
Vol 25 (4) ◽  
pp. 531-534 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adeline Fabre ◽  
Gilles Ramstein ◽  
Catherine Ritz ◽  
Sophie Pinot ◽  
Nicolas Fournier

2013 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 367-376 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. D. Annan ◽  
J. C. Hargreaves

Abstract. Some recent compilations of proxy data both on land and ocean (MARGO Project Members, 2009; Bartlein et al., 2011; Shakun et al., 2012), have provided a new opportunity for an improved assessment of the overall climatic state of the Last Glacial Maximum. In this paper, we combine these proxy data with the ensemble of structurally diverse state of the art climate models which participated in the PMIP2 project (Braconnot et al., 2007) to generate a spatially complete reconstruction of surface air (and sea surface) temperatures. We test a variety of approaches, and show that multiple linear regression performs well for this application. Our reconstruction is significantly different to and more accurate than previous approaches and we obtain an estimated global mean cooling of 4.0 ± 0.8 °C (95% CI).


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