Acceleration of global warming due to carbon-cycle feedbacks in a coupled climate model
The continued increase in the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide due to anthropogenic emissions is predicted to lead to significant changes in climate. About half of the current emissions are being absorbed by the ocean and by land ecosystems, but this absorption is sensitive to climate as...
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Published in | Nature (London) Vol. 408; no. 6809; pp. 184 - 187 |
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Main Authors | , , , , |
Format | Journal Article |
Language | English |
Published |
London
Nature Publishing
09.11.2000
Nature Publishing Group |
Subjects | |
Online Access | Get full text |
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Summary: | The continued increase in the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide
due to anthropogenic emissions is predicted to lead to significant changes
in climate. About half of the current emissions are being absorbed
by the ocean and by land ecosystems, but this absorption is
sensitive to climate as well as to atmospheric carbon dioxide
concentrations, creating a feedback loop. General circulation
models have generally excluded the feedback between climate and the biosphere,
using static vegetation distributions and CO2 concentrations from
simple carbon-cycle models that do not include climate change.
Here we present results from a fully coupled, three-dimensional carbon-climate
model, indicating that carbon-cycle feedbacks could significantly accelerate
climate change over the twenty-first century. We find that under a 'business
as usual' scenario, the terrestrial biosphere acts as an overall carbon
sink until about 2050, but turns into a source thereafter. By 2100, the ocean
uptake rate of 5 Gt C yr-1 is balanced
by the terrestrial carbon source, and atmospheric CO2 concentrations
are 250 p.p.m.v. higher in our fully coupled simulation than in uncoupled
carbon models, resulting in a global-mean warming of 5.5 K,
as compared to 4 K without the carbon-cycle feedback. |
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Bibliography: | erratum ObjectType-Article-2 SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1 ObjectType-Feature-1 content type line 23 ObjectType-Article-1 ObjectType-Feature-2 |
ISSN: | 0028-0836 1476-4687 |
DOI: | 10.1038/35041539 |