Abstracted/indexed

Fluxes from land-use change and management (F_LUC) are a large source of uncertainty in global and regional carbon budgets. Here we evaluate the impact of different model parameterizarions on F_LUC. We show that carbon stock densities and allocation of carbon following transitions contribute more to uncertainty in F_LUC than response times. Uncertainty in F_LUC could thus, in principle, be reduced by available earth-observation data on carbon densities at global scale.

In this study, we model the relative importance of several contributors to the land-use and land-cover change (LULCC) flux based on a LULCC dataset including uncertainty estimates. The uncertainty of LULCC is as relevant as applying wood harvest and gross transitions for the cumulative LULCC flux over the industrial period. However, LULCC uncertainty matters less than the other two factors for the LULCC flux in 2014; historical LULCC uncertainty is negligible for estimates of future scenarios.

This study, for the first time, presents a spatio-temporally explicit comparison of different model-derived land-use and land cover change emissions (ELUCs) based on the TRENDY v8 dynamic global vegetation models (used in the Global Carbon Budget of 2019). We find huge regional ELUC differences resulting from environmental assumptions, simulated periods and the timing of land use and land cover changes and propose a modified definition to standardize ELUC attribution across time and space.

The current radiative imbalance at the top of the atmosphere is increasing the heat stored in the oceans, atmosphere, continental subsurface, and cryosphere, with consequences for societies and ecosystems (e.g., sea level rise). We performed the first assessment of the ability of global climate models to represent such heat storage in the climate subsystems. Models are able to reproduce the observed atmosphere heat content, with biases in the simulation of heat content in the rest of components.

We show that the modern concepts of non-equilibrium statistical mechanics can be applied to large scale environmental fluid dynamics, where fluctuations are not thermal but come from the turbulence. The work theorems developed by Jarzynski and Crooks are applied to air-sea interaction. Rather than looking at average values of the thermodynamic variables they consider their probability density functions which allow to replace the inequalities of equilibrium statistical mechanics by equalities.

The study assesses the impacts of climate change on forest productivity in the Hindu Kush Himalayan region. LPJ-GUESS was simulated from 1850–2100. In first approach, the model was compared with observational estimates. The comparison showed a moderate to weak agreement. In the second approach, the model was assessed for the temporal and spatial trends of net biome productivity and carbon pool. A reduction was found from 1951–2005 however, increase in both variables were predicted in 2100.

This study deals with leaf thermoregulation, a process that describes the ability of leaves to buffer against ambient temperatures. In the past, this effect has been investigated at the leaf scale, but not on the canopy or global scale. Here we try to close this scientific gap by studying the large-scale effect of leaf thermoregulation using the Max Planck Institute's Earth system model. We believe that our study provides valuable insights for modelers and observers.