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| Titel |
Implementing high-latitude biogeochemical processes into Earth System Models |
| VerfasserIn |
Victor Brovkin, Thomas Kleinen, Fabio Cresto-Aleina, Silvia Kloster, Tatiana Ilyina |
| Konferenz |
EGU General Assembly 2016
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| Medientyp |
Artikel
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| Sprache |
en
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| Digitales Dokument |
PDF |
| Erschienen |
In: GRA - Volume 18 (2016) |
| Datensatznummer |
250125070
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| Publikation (Nr.) |
 EGU/EGU2016-4599.pdf |
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| Zusammenfassung |
| Projections of future climate changes suggest that air temperatures in the Arctic could rise to
the levels unprecedented in the last million years. Sensitivity of carbon storages on land and
shelves to climate change of that scale is highly uncertain. Earth System models (ESMs),
consisting of atmosphere, ocean, land, and cryosphere components are the main tools to
understand interactions between carbon cycle and climate. However, ESM representation of
ecological and biogeochemical processes in the Arctic is extremely simplistic. For
example, all ESMs agree that tree cover in the future warming scenarios will move
northwards to the Arctic coast, but they ignore interactions between vegetation,
permafrost, and disturbances such as fires, which are critical for vegetation dynamics in
this region. Improving modeling of interactions between model components and
their evaluation against growing observational evidence is a promising research
area.
The first attempts to account for the permafrost carbon dynamics in the ESM framework
suggest that CO2 and CH4 emissions from high-latitude regions in the 21st century are
relatively small, but they become much more significant afterwards due to committed climate
changes. Therefore, extension of ESM simulations beyond 2100 is essential to estimate a
proper scale of frozen carbon pool response to human-induced climate change. Additionally,
inclusion of sub-sea permafrost component into ESMs is an active research area that brings
together terrestrial and marine biogeochemical communities, as well as geologists analyzing
climate proxies on glacial timescales.
Another challenging aspect of biogeochemical interactions in Arctic is an extreme land
surface heterogeneity. A mixture of wetlands, lakes, and vegetation-covered surfaces on fine
local scale is not properly reflected in the model structure. A promising approach of dealing
with scaling gaps in modeling high-latitude biogeochemical processes in ESMs will be
presented. |
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