Empirical estimate of forestation-induced precipitation changes in Europe

Meier, R.; Schwaab, Jonas; Seneviratne, Sonia I.; Sprenger, Michael; Lewis, Elizabeth; Davin, Edouard L.

doi:10.1038/s41561-021-00773-6

Cited by 88 publications

(56 citation statements)

References 64 publications

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“…Precipitation typically decreases globally and over the deforested areas, in particular in the humid tropics, in model simulations of large-scale deforestation [15,151]. This is generally in line with a smaller-scale, observational evidence for Europe showing increased precipitation at the locations of forestation, though downwind effects show a seasonally and regionally more specific pattern [157]. Recent research confirmed that the effects of deforestation on precipitation in the Amazon are highly scale-dependent, with kilometer-scale LULCC increasing precipitation [158], but large-scale clearing decreasing it [159].…”

Section: Biogeophysical Effectssupporting

confidence: 75%

Land Use Effects on Climate: Current State, Recent Progress, and Emerging Topics

Pongratz

Schwingshackl

Bultan

et al. 2021

Curr Clim Change Rep

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Purpose of Review As demand for food and fiber, but also for negative emissions, brings most of the Earth’s land surface under management, we aim to consolidate the scientific progress of recent years on the climatic effects of global land use change, including land management, and related land cover changes (LULCC). Recent Findings We review the methodological advances in both modeling and observations to capture biogeochemical and biogeophysical LULCC effects and summarize the knowledge on underlying mechanisms and on the strength of their effects. Recent studies have raised or resolved several important questions related to LULCC: How can we derive CO2 fluxes related to LULCC from satellites? Why are uncertainties in LULCC-related GHG fluxes so large? How can we explain that estimates of afforestation/reforestation potentials diverge by an order of magnitude? Can we reconcile the seemingly contradicting results of models and observations concerning the cooling effect of high-latitude deforestation? Summary Major progress has been achieved in understanding the complementarity of modeling, observations, and inventories for estimating the impacts of various LULCC practices on carbon, energy, and water fluxes. Emerging fields are the operationalization of the recently achieved integration of approaches, such as a full greenhouse gas balance of LULCC, mapping of emissions from global models to country-reported emissions data, or model evaluation against local biogeophysical observations. Fundamental challenges remain, however, e.g., in separating anthropogenic from natural land use dynamics and accurately quantifying the first. Recent progress has laid the foundation for future research to integrate the local to global scales at which the various effects act, to create co-benefits between global mitigation, including land-based carbon dioxide removal, and changes in local climate for effective adaptation strategies.

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Section: Biogeophysical Effectssupporting

confidence: 75%

Land Use Effects on Climate: Current State, Recent Progress, and Emerging Topics

Pongratz

Schwingshackl

Bultan

et al. 2021

Curr Clim Change Rep

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“…completely offset the drying effect of future warming. More recent results (Meier et al, 2021c) have used raingauge data to estimate precipitation changes induced by land cover change. Meier et al (2021c) created a statistical model to show that reforestation of agricultural land can increase precipitation locally, especially in winter, and were able to separate the effects on both local and downwind precipitation regionally and seasonally.…”

Section: Anthropogenic Land-use and Land Cover Changesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…More recent results (Meier et al, 2021c) have used raingauge data to estimate precipitation changes induced by land cover change. Meier et al (2021c) created a statistical model to show that reforestation of agricultural land can increase precipitation locally, especially in winter, and were able to separate the effects on both local and downwind precipitation regionally and seasonally. They also found that climate change induced summer precipitation reductions could be offset by reforestation, with a particularly strong effect in southwest Europe, though their analyses also indicate small precipitation increases in the Baltic Sea region, relative to a baseline scenario with no land cover change, consistent with the results of Gálos et al (2013).…”

Section: Anthropogenic Land-use and Land Cover Changesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In other regions, such models have better agreed with observations of precipitation extremes and sometimes also given a larger climate change signal than the more traditional "high-resolution" models operating at c. 10 km grid spacing (Christensen et al, 2021). Land use change and cover, including changes in forests, can induce both local and downwind precipitation change (Meier et al, 2021c), and need to be included in projections.…”

Section: Precipitationmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Climate Change in the Baltic Sea Region: A Summary

Meier

Kniebusch

Dieterich

et al. 2021

Preprint

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Abstract. Based on the Baltic Earth Assessment Reports of this thematic issue in Earth System Dynamics and recent peer-reviewed literature, current knowledge about the effects of global warming on past and future changes in climate of the Baltic Sea region is summarized and assessed. The study is an update of the Second Assessment of Climate Change (BACC II) published in 2015 and focusses on the atmosphere, land, cryosphere, ocean, sediments and the terrestrial and marine biosphere. Based on the summaries of the recent knowledge gained in paleo-, historical and future regional climate research, we find that the main conclusions from earlier assessments remain still valid. However, new long-term, homogenous observational records, e.g. for Scandinavian glacier inventories, sea-level driven saltwater inflows, so-called Major Baltic Inflows, and phytoplankton species distribution and new scenario simulations with improved models, e.g. for glaciers, lake ice and marine food web, have become available. In many cases, uncertainties can now be better estimated than before, because more models can be included in the ensembles, especially for the Baltic Sea. With the help of coupled models, feedbacks between several components of the Earth System have been studied and multiple driver studies were performed, e.g. projections of the food web that include fisheries, eutrophication and climate change. New data sets and projections have led to a revised understanding of changes in some variables such as salinity. Furthermore, it has become evident that natural variability, in particular for the ocean on multidecadal time scales, is greater than previously estimated, challenging our ability to detect observed and projected changes in climate. In this context, the first paleoclimate simulations regionalized for the Baltic Sea region are instructive. Hence, estimated uncertainties for the projections of many variables increased. In addition to the well-known influence of the North Atlantic Oscillation, it was found that also other low-frequency modes of internal variability, such as the Atlantic Multidecadal Variability, have profound effects on the climate of the Baltic Sea region. Challenges were also identified, such as the systematic discrepancy between future cloudiness trends in global and regional models and the difficulty of confidently attributing large observed changes in marine ecosystems to climate change. Finally, we compare our results with other coastal sea assessments, such as the North Sea Region Climate Change Assessment (NOSCCA) and find that the effects of climate change on the Baltic Sea differ from those on the North Sea, since Baltic Sea oceanography and ecosystems are very different from other coastal seas such as the North Sea. While the North Sea dynamics is dominated by tides, the Baltic Sea is characterized by brackish water, a perennial vertical stratification in the southern sub-basins and a seasonal sea ice cover in the northern sub-basins.

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“…A first set of studies attempted to use Earth System Models (ESMs) to understand the global effects of land cover change, both in idealised (Davin and de Noblet-Ducoudre, 2010;Boysen et al, 2020;Meier et al, 2021) and in more realistic setups (Pitman et al, 2009;Pongratz et al, 2010;Boisier et al, 2012;Ito et al, 2020). However, these studies only show aggregated effects of the biogeophysical processes highlighted above and no direct separation is made between effects caused by local and non-local processes.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The biogeophysical effects of idealized land cover and land management changes in Earth System Models

Hertog

Havermann

Vanderkelen

et al. 2022

Preprint

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Abstract. Land cover and land management change (LCLMC) has been highlighted for its critical role in mitigation scenarios, both in terms of global mitigation and local adaptation. Yet, the climate effect of individual LCLMC options, their dependence on the background climate and the local vs. non-local responses are still poorly understood across different Earth System Models (ESMs). Here we simulate the climatic effects of LCLMC using three state-of-the-art ESMs, including the Community Earth System Model (CESM), the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology Earth System Model (MPI-ESM) and the European Consortium Earth System Model (EC-EARTH). We assess the LCLMC effects using four idealized experiments: (i) a fully afforested world, (ii) a world fully covered by cropland, (ii) a fully afforested world with extensive wood harvesting, and (iv) a full cropland world with extensive irrigation. In these idealized sensitivity experiments, performed under present-day climate conditions, the effects of the different LCLMC strategies represent an upper bound for the potential of global mitigation and local adaptation. To disentangle the local and non-local effects from the LCLMC, a checkerboard-like LCLMC perturbation, i.e., alternating grid boxes with and without LCLMC, is applied. The local effects of deforestation on surface temperature are largely consistent across the ESMs and the observations, with a cooling in boreal latitudes and a warming in the tropics. However, the energy balance components driving the change in surface temperature show less consistency across the ESMs and the observations. Additionally, some biases exist in specific ESMs, such as a strong albedo response in CESM mid-latitudes and a soil thawing driven warming in boreal latitudes in EC-EARTH. The non-local effects on surface temperature are broadly consistent across ESMs for afforestation, though larger model uncertainty exists for cropland expansion. Irrigation clearly induces a cooling effect, however; the ESMs disagree whether these are mainly local or non-local effects. Wood harvesting is found to have no discernible biogeophysical effects on climate. Our results overall underline the potential of ensemble simulations to inform decision making regarding future climate consequences of land-based mitigation and adaptation strategies.

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Empirical estimate of forestation-induced precipitation changes in Europe

Cited by 88 publications

References 64 publications

Land Use Effects on Climate: Current State, Recent Progress, and Emerging Topics

Land Use Effects on Climate: Current State, Recent Progress, and Emerging Topics

Climate Change in the Baltic Sea Region: A Summary

The biogeophysical effects of idealized land cover and land management changes in Earth System Models

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