Description: Burial-nutrient feedbacks amplify the sensitivity of atmospheric carbon dioxide to changes in organic matter remineralisation Earth System Dynamics, 5, 321-343, 2014 Author(s): R. Roth, S. P. Ritz, and F. Joos Changes in the marine remineralisation of particulate organic matter (POM) and calcium carbonate potentially provide a positive feedback with atmospheric CO 2 and climate change. The responses to changes in remineralisation length scales are systematically mapped with the Bern3D ocean–sediment model for atmospheric CO 2 and tracer fields for which observations and palaeoproxies exist. Results show that the "sediment burial-nutrient feedback" amplifies the response in atmospheric CO 2 by a factor of four to seven. A transient imbalance between the weathering flux and the burial of organic matter and calcium carbonate lead to sustained changes in the ocean's phosphate and alkalinity inventory and in turn in surface nutrient availability, marine productivity, and atmospheric CO 2 . It takes decades to centuries to reorganise tracers and fluxes within the ocean, many millennia to approach equilibrium for burial fluxes, while δ 13 C signatures are still changing 200 000 years after the perturbation. At 1.7 ppm m −1 , atmospheric CO 2 sensitivity is about fifty times larger for a unit change in the remineralisation depth of POM than of calcium carbonate. The results highlight the role of organic matter burial in atmospheric CO 2 and the substantial impacts of seemingly small changes in POM remineralisation.

Description: Global and regional effects of land-use change on climate in 21st century simulations with interactive carbon cycle Earth System Dynamics, 5, 309-319, 2014 Author(s): L. R. Boysen, V. Brovkin, V. K. Arora, P. Cadule, N. de Noblet-Ducoudré, E. Kato, J. Pongratz, and V. Gayler Biogeophysical (BGP) and biogeochemical (BGC) effects of land-use and land cover change (LULCC) are separated at the global and regional scales in new interactive CO 2 simulations for the 21st century. Results from four earth system models (ESMs) are analyzed for the future RCP8.5 scenario from simulations with and without land-use and land cover change (LULCC), contributing to the Land-Use and Climate, IDentification of robust impacts (LUCID) project. Over the period 2006–2100, LULCC causes the atmospheric CO 2 concentration to increase by 12, 22, and 66 ppm in CanESM2, MIROC-ESM, and MPI-ESM-LR, respectively. Statistically significant changes in global near-surface temperature are found in three models with a BGC-induced global mean annual warming between 0.07 and 0.23 K. BGP-induced responses are simulated by three models in areas of intense LULCC of varying sign and magnitude (between −0.47 and 0.10 K). Modifications of the land carbon pool by LULCC are disentangled in accordance with processes that can lead to increases and decreases in this carbon pool. Global land carbon losses due to LULCC are simulated by all models: 218, 57, 35 and 34 Gt C by MPI-ESM-LR, MIROC-ESM, IPSL-CM5A-LR and CanESM2, respectively. On the contrary, the CO 2 -fertilization effect caused by elevated atmospheric CO 2 concentrations due to LULCC leads to a land carbon gain of 39 Gt C in MPI-ESM-LR and is almost negligible in the other models. A substantial part of the spread in models' responses to LULCC is attributed to the differences in implementation of LULCC (e.g., whether pastures or crops are simulated explicitly) and the simulation of specific processes. Simple idealized experiments with clear protocols for implementing LULCC in ESMs are needed to increase the understanding of model responses and the statistical significance of results, especially when analyzing the regional-scale impacts of LULCC.

Description: Long-range memory in internal and forced dynamics of millennium-long climate model simulations Earth System Dynamics, 5, 295-308, 2014 Author(s): L. Østvand, T. Nilsen, K. Rypdal, D. Divine, and M. Rypdal Northern Hemisphere (NH) temperature records from a palaeoclimate reconstruction and a number of millennium-long climate model experiments are investigated for long-range memory (LRM). The models are two Earth system models and two atmosphere–ocean general circulation models. The periodogram, detrended fluctuation analysis and wavelet variance analysis are applied to examine scaling properties and to estimate a scaling exponent of the temperature records. A simple linear model for the climate response to external forcing is also applied to the reconstruction and the forced climate model runs, and then compared to unforced control runs to extract the LRM generated by internal dynamics of the climate system. The climate models show strong persistent scaling with power spectral densities of the form S(f) ~ f −β with 0.8 〈 β 〈 1 on timescales from years to several centuries. This is somewhat stronger persistence than found in the reconstruction (β ≈ 0.7). We find no indication that LRM found in these model runs is induced by external forcing, which suggests that LRM on sub-decadal to century time scales in NH mean temperatures is a property of the internal dynamics of the climate system. Reconstructed and instrumental sea surface temperature records for a local site, Reykjanes Ridge, are also studied, showing that strong persistence is found also for local ocean temperature.

Description: Projecting Antarctic ice discharge using response functions from SeaRISE ice-sheet models Earth System Dynamics, 5, 271-293, 2014 Author(s): A. Levermann, R. Winkelmann, S. Nowicki, J. L. Fastook, K. Frieler, R. Greve, H. H. Hellmer, M. A. Martin, M. Meinshausen, M. Mengel, A. J. Payne, D. Pollard, T. Sato, R. Timmermann, W. L. Wang, and R. A. Bindschadler The largest uncertainty in projections of future sea-level change results from the potentially changing dynamical ice discharge from Antarctica. Basal ice-shelf melting induced by a warming ocean has been identified as a major cause for additional ice flow across the grounding line. Here we attempt to estimate the uncertainty range of future ice discharge from Antarctica by combining uncertainty in the climatic forcing, the oceanic response and the ice-sheet model response. The uncertainty in the global mean temperature increase is obtained from historically constrained emulations with the MAGICC-6.0 (Model for the Assessment of Greenhouse gas Induced Climate Change) model. The oceanic forcing is derived from scaling of the subsurface with the atmospheric warming from 19 comprehensive climate models of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP-5) and two ocean models from the EU-project Ice2Sea. The dynamic ice-sheet response is derived from linear response functions for basal ice-shelf melting for four different Antarctic drainage regions using experiments from the Sea-level Response to Ice Sheet Evolution (SeaRISE) intercomparison project with five different Antarctic ice-sheet models. The resulting uncertainty range for the historic Antarctic contribution to global sea-level rise from 1992 to 2011 agrees with the observed contribution for this period if we use the three ice-sheet models with an explicit representation of ice-shelf dynamics and account for the time-delayed warming of the oceanic subsurface compared to the surface air temperature. The median of the additional ice loss for the 21st century is computed to 0.07 m (66% range: 0.02–0.14 m; 90% range: 0.0–0.23 m) of global sea-level equivalent for the low-emission RCP-2.6 (Representative Concentration Pathway) scenario and 0.09 m (66% range: 0.04–0.21 m; 90% range: 0.01–0.37 m) for the strongest RCP-8.5. Assuming no time delay between the atmospheric warming and the oceanic subsurface, these values increase to 0.09 m (66% range: 0.04–0.17 m; 90% range: 0.02–0.25 m) for RCP-2.6 and 0.15 m (66% range: 0.07–0.28 m; 90% range: 0.04–0.43 m) for RCP-8.5. All probability distributions are highly skewed towards high values. The applied ice-sheet models are coarse resolution with limitations in the representation of grounding-line motion. Within the constraints of the applied methods, the uncertainty induced from different ice-sheet models is smaller than that induced by the external forcing to the ice sheets.

Description: Bimodality of woody cover and biomass across the precipitation gradient in West Africa Earth System Dynamics, 5, 257-270, 2014 Author(s): Z. Yin, S. C. Dekker, B. J. J. M. van den Hurk, and H. A. Dijkstra Multiple states of woody cover under similar climate conditions are found in both conceptual models and observations. Due to the limitation of the observed woody cover data set, it is unclear whether the observed bimodality is caused by the presence of multiple stable states or is due to dynamic growth processes of vegetation. In this study, we combine a woody cover data set with an aboveground biomass data set to investigate the simultaneous occurrences of savanna and forest states under the same precipitation forcing. To interpret the results we use a recently developed vegetation dynamics model (the Balanced Optimality Structure Vegetation Model), in which the effect of fires is included. Our results show that bimodality also exists in aboveground biomass and retrieved vegetation structure. In addition, the observed savanna distribution can be understood as derived from a stable state and a slightly drifting (transient) state, the latter having the potential to shift to the forest state. Finally, the results indicate that vegetation structure (horizontal vs. vertical leaf extent) is a crucial component for the existence of bimodality.

Description: Comparing tide gauge observations to regional patterns of sea-level change (1961–2003) Earth System Dynamics, 5, 243-255, 2014 Author(s): A. B. A. Slangen, R. S. W. van de Wal, Y. Wada, and L. L. A. Vermeersen Although the global mean sea-level budget for the 20th century can now be closed, the understanding of sea-level change on a regional scale is still limited. In this study we compare observations from tide gauges to regional patterns from various contributions to sea-level change to see how much of the regional measurements can be explained. Processes that are included are land ice mass changes and terrestrial storage changes with associated gravitational, rotational and deformational effects, steric/dynamic changes, atmospheric pressure loading and glacial isostatic adjustment (GIA). The study focuses on the mean linear trend of regional sea-level rise between 1961 and 2003. It is found that on a regional level the explained variance of the observed trend is 0.87 with a regression coefficient of 1.07. The observations and models overlap within the 1σ uncertainty range in all regions. The main processes explaining the variability in the observations appear to be the steric/dynamic component and the GIA. Local observations prove to be more difficult to explain because they show larger spatial variations, and therefore require more information on small-scale processes.

Description: Inter-hemispheric asymmetry in the sea-ice response to volcanic forcing simulated by MPI-ESM (COSMOS-Mill) Earth System Dynamics, 5, 223-242, 2014 Author(s): D. Zanchettin, O. Bothe, C. Timmreck, J. Bader, A. Beitsch, H.-F. Graf, D. Notz, and J. H. Jungclaus The decadal evolution of Arctic and Antarctic sea ice following strong volcanic eruptions is investigated in four climate simulation ensembles performed with the COSMOS-Mill version of the Max Planck Institute Earth System Model. The ensembles differ in the magnitude of the imposed volcanic perturbations, with sizes representative of historical tropical eruptions (1991 Pinatubo and 1815 Tambora) and of tropical and extra-tropical "supervolcano" eruptions. A post-eruption Arctic sea-ice expansion is robustly detected in all ensembles, while Antarctic sea ice responds only to supervolcano eruptions, undergoing an initial short-lived expansion and a subsequent prolonged contraction phase. Strong volcanic forcing therefore emerges as a potential source of inter-hemispheric interannual-to-decadal climate variability, although the inter-hemispheric signature is weak in the case of eruptions comparable to historical eruptions. The post-eruption inter-hemispheric decadal asymmetry in sea ice is interpreted as a consequence mainly of the different exposure of Arctic and Antarctic regional climates to induced meridional heat transport changes and of dominating local feedbacks that set in within the Antarctic region. Supervolcano experiments help to clarify differences in simulated hemispheric internal dynamics related to imposed negative net radiative imbalances, including the relative importance of the thermal and dynamical components of the sea-ice response. Supervolcano experiments could therefore serve the assessment of climate models' behavior under strong external forcing conditions and, consequently, favor advancements in our understanding of simulated sea-ice dynamics.

Description: The sensitivity of carbon turnover in the Community Land Model to modified assumptions about soil processes Earth System Dynamics, 5, 211-221, 2014 Author(s): B. Foereid, D. S. Ward, N. Mahowald, E. Paterson, and J. Lehmann Soil organic matter (SOM) is the largest store of organic carbon (C) in the biosphere, but the turnover of SOM is still incompletely understood and not well described in global C cycle models. Here we use the Community Land Model (CLM) and compare the output for soil organic C stocks (SOC) to estimates from a global data set. We also modify the assumptions about SOC turnover in two ways: (1) we assume distinct temperature sensitivities of SOC pools with different turnover time and (2) we assume a priming effect, such that the decomposition rate of native SOC increases in response to a supply of fresh organic matter. The standard model predicted the global distribution of SOC reasonably well in most areas, but it failed to predict the very high stocks of SOC at high latitudes. It also predicted too much SOC in areas with high plant productivity, such as tropical rainforests and some midlatitude areas. Total SOC at equilibrium was reduced by a small amount (

Description: Quantifying uncertainties in soil carbon responses to changes in global mean temperature and precipitation Earth System Dynamics, 5, 197-209, 2014 Author(s): K. Nishina, A. Ito, D. J. Beerling, P. Cadule, P. Ciais, D. B. Clark, P. Falloon, A. D. Friend, R. Kahana, E. Kato, R. Keribin, W. Lucht, M. Lomas, T. T. Rademacher, R. Pavlick, S. Schaphoff, N. Vuichard, L. Warszawaski, and T. Yokohata Soil organic carbon (SOC) is the largest carbon pool in terrestrial ecosystems and may play a key role in biospheric feedbacks with elevated atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) in a warmer future world. We examined the simulation results of seven terrestrial biome models when forced with climate projections from four representative-concentration-pathways (RCPs)-based atmospheric concentration scenarios. The goal was to specify calculated uncertainty in global SOC stock projections from global and regional perspectives and give insight to the improvement of SOC-relevant processes in biome models. SOC stocks among the biome models varied from 1090 to 2650 Pg C even in historical periods (ca. 2000). In a higher forcing scenario (i.e., RCP8.5), inconsistent estimates of impact on the total SOC (2099–2000) were obtained from different biome model simulations, ranging from a net sink of 347 Pg C to a net source of 122 Pg C. In all models, the increasing atmospheric CO 2 concentration in the RCP8.5 scenario considerably contributed to carbon accumulation in SOC. However, magnitudes varied from 93 to 264 Pg C by the end of the 21st century across biome models. Using the time-series data of total global SOC simulated by each biome model, we analyzed the sensitivity of the global SOC stock to global mean temperature and global precipitation anomalies (Δ T and Δ P respectively) in each biome model using a state-space model. This analysis suggests that Δ T explained global SOC stock changes in most models with a resolution of 1–2 °C, and the magnitude of global SOC decomposition from a 2 °C rise ranged from almost 0 to 3.53 Pg C yr −1 among the biome models. However, Δ P had a negligible impact on change in the global SOC changes. Spatial heterogeneity was evident and inconsistent among the biome models, especially in boreal to arctic regions. Our study reveals considerable climate uncertainty in SOC decomposition responses to climate and CO 2 change among biome models. Further research is required to improve our ability to estimate biospheric feedbacks through both SOC-relevant and vegetation-relevant processes.

Description: Terminology as a key uncertainty in net land use and land cover change carbon flux estimates Earth System Dynamics, 5, 177-195, 2014 Author(s): J. Pongratz, C. H. Reick, R. A. Houghton, and J. I. House Reasons for the large uncertainty in land use and land cover change (LULCC) emissions go beyond recognized issues related to the available data on land cover change and the fact that model simulations rely on a simplified and incomplete description of the complexity of biological and LULCC processes. The large range across published LULCC emission estimates is also fundamentally driven by the fact that the net LULCC flux is defined and calculated in different ways across models. We introduce a conceptual framework that allows us to compare the different types of models and simulation setups used to derive land use fluxes. We find that published studies are based on at least nine different definitions of the net LULCC flux. Many multi-model syntheses lack a clear agreement on definition. Our analysis reveals three key processes that are accounted for in different ways: the land use feedback, the loss of additional sink capacity, and legacy (regrowth and decomposition) fluxes. We show that these terminological differences, alone, explain differences between published net LULCC flux estimates that are of the same order as the published estimates themselves. This has consequences for quantifications of the residual terrestrial sink: the spread in estimates caused by terminological differences is conveyed to those of the residual sink. Furthermore, the application of inconsistent definitions of net LULCC flux and residual sink has led to double-counting of fluxes in the past. While the decision to use a specific definition of the net LULCC flux will depend on the scientific application and potential political considerations, our analysis shows that the uncertainty of the net LULCC flux can be substantially reduced when the existing terminological confusion is resolved.