#05 Carbon-climate-human interactions

Abstract

The C⁴MIP and CMIP5 results highlighted large uncertainties in climate projections, driven to a large extent by limited understanding of the interactions between terrestrial carbon-cycle and climate feedbacks, and their associated uncertainties. These feedbacks are dominated by uncertainties in soil processes, disturbance dynamics, ecosystem response to climate change, and agricultural productivity, and land-use change. Research conducted under the previous Integrated Earth System Model (iESM) project found that the inclusion of climate feedbacks on the terrestrial system in an RCP4.5 scenario increase ecosystem productivity, resulting in declines in cropland extent and increases in bioenergy production and forest cover. As a follow-up to these studies and to further understand climate-carbon cycle interactions and feedbacks, this research addresses three questions: (1) how consistent are the iESM results across different levels of climate change, (2) what is the relative contribution of CO₂ fertilization and climate change, and (3) how robust are the results across different models and methods? We find that higher levels of radiative forcing result in higher productivity growth, that increases in CO₂ concentrations are the dominant contributors to that growth, and that iESM productivity increases fall in the middle of the range when compared to other CMIP5 models and the AgMIP models.