Increased control of vegetation on global terrestrial energy fluxes

Forzieri, Giovanni; Miralles, Diego G.; Ciais, Philippe; Alkama, Ramdane; Ryu, Youngryel; Duveiller, Grégory; Zhang, Ke; Robertson, Eddy; Kautz, Markus; Martens, Brecht; Jiang, Chongya; Arneth, Almut; Georgievski, Goran; Li, Wei; Ceccherini, Guido; Anthoni, Peter; Lawrence, P.; Wiltshire, Andy; Pongratz, Julia; Piao, Shilong; Sitch, Stephen; Goll, Daniel S.; Arora, Vivek K.; Lienert, Sebastian; Lombardozzi, Danica; Kato, Etsushi; Nabel, Julia E. M. S.; Tian, Hanqin; Friedlingstein, Pierre; Cescatti, Alessandro

doi:10.1038/s41558-020-0717-0

Cited by 215 publications

(153 citation statements)

References 47 publications

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“…Referring to Forzieri (2020) and Australia (Fig. 1a), while the TWS was significantly higher in most of the above regions, central and Eastern Europe and central and eastern North America when LAI was high (Fig.…”

Section: Demand-limited Supply-limited Region and Land Cover Classesmentioning

confidence: 93%

Impact of Vegetation Leaf Area Change on Global Terrestrial Water Storage in Recent 30 Years Based on GRACE and Reconstruction Data

Hong

Kang

et al. 2021

Preprint

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Vegetation change has an important impact on land water cycle by changing transpiration and other water exchange between land and atmosphere. Terrestrial water storage (TWS) is an important component of global water cycle and freshwater resources. However, the impact of vegetation change on terrestrial water storage under the background of global climate change is still unclear. Based on the GRACE satellite observed and GRACE-REC reconstructed global terrestrial water storage data, this study investigated the impact of global vegetation leaf area change on terrestrial water storage in recent 30 years. The results show that there is a significant positive correlation between leaf area index (LAI) and terrestrial water storage in the demand-limited region. The sensitivity of TWS on LAI change is high mainly in Australia, central and southern Africa, South Asia, Mediterranean region, western United States, southern South America and other regions with high temperature and low precipitation, and the analysis of GRACE-REC shows the sensitivity in demand-limited region has an increasing trend. Compared with climate factors such as temperature and precipitation, the TWS trend caused by LAI is nearly the same, and has the same sign (all positive or all negative) as that of originally TWS in about 63.6% global land area, and the LAI-related TWS trend is high in the region with annual average precipitation of 500-1000mm. In the six different global land cover classes, the sensitivity of TWS to the LAI change is much higher in semi-arid, grass cop, sparsely vegetated regions, and LAI plays an important role in the interannual variations of TWS in semi-arid, grass cop regions. This study emphasizes the important role of vegetation change in the land water cycle, which is of great significance to the management and utilization of water resources in the future, especially in the arid and semi-arid regions.

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Section: Demand-limited Supply-limited Region and Land Cover Classesmentioning

confidence: 93%

Impact of Vegetation Leaf Area Change on Global Terrestrial Water Storage in Recent 30 Years Based on GRACE and Reconstruction Data

Hong

Kang

et al. 2021

Preprint

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“…For example, Jiang et al [36] found that interannual variabilities of GLASS LAI products show large differences with other LAI products (i.e., GLOBMAP, GIMMS, and TCDR). Furthermore, previous studies found that vegetation greening is main driver to the multi-decadal ET trend since 1980s [40,[86][87][88][89]. Therefore, great disagreements among global long-term satellite LAI products can cause the large differences of estimated long-term ET trend.…”

Section: Impact Of the Uncertainties Of Forcing Data On Etmentioning

confidence: 99%

Evaluation of Evapotranspiration Models Using Different LAI and Meteorological Forcing Data from 1982 to 2017

et al. 2020

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We evaluated the performance of three global evapotranspiration (ET) models at local, regional, and global scales using the multiple sets of leaf area index (LAI) and meteorological data from 1982 to 2017 and investigated the uncertainty in ET simulations from the model structure and forcing data. The three ET models were the Simple Terrestrial Hydrosphere model (SiTH) developed by our team, the Priestley–Taylor Jet Propulsion Laboratory model (PT-JPL), and the MODerate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) ET algorithm (MOD16). Comparing the observed with simulated monthly ET by the three models over 43 Fluxnet sites, we found that SiTH overestimated ET for forests with mean slope from 1.25 to 1.67, but it performed better than the other two models over short vegetation. MOD16 and PT-JPL models simulated well for forests but poorly in dryland biomes (slope = 0.25~0.55; R2 = 0.02~0.46). At the catchment scale, all models performed well, except for some tropical and high latitudinal catchments, with NSE values lower than 0 and RMSE and MAE values far beyond their mean values. At the global scale, SiTH highly overestimated ET in tropics, while PT-JPL slightly underestimated ET between 30°N and 60°N and MOD16 underestimated ET between 15°S and 30°S. Generally, the PT-JPL provided the better performance than SiTH and MOD16 models. This study also revealed that the estimated ET by SiTH and especially PT-JPL model were influenced by the uncertainty in meteorological data, and the estimated ET was performed better using MERRA-2 datasets for PT-JPL and using ERA5 datasets for SiTH. While the estimated ET by MOD16 were relatively sensitive to LAI data. In addition, our results suggested that the GLOBMAP and GIMMS datasets were more suitable for long-term ET simulations than the GLASS dataset.

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“…This serves to slow the growth rate of atmospheric CO 2 , and consequently reduces the rate of climate change. The amount of CO 2 absorbed by the land has also increased rapidly over the past few decades, likewise to anthropogenic CO 2 emissions it has more than doubled since 1960 (Friedlingstein et al, 2019) with extensive greening reported (Piao et al, 2020) as well as large associated changes in the effect vegetation has on local and global climate (Forzieri et al, 2020). The increased land sink has occurred despite an increased prevalence of large-scale natural disruptions to ecosystems (McDowell et al, 2020) and evidence that some of the largest carbon sinks of the planet have already saturated (Hubau et al, 2020).…”

Section: Carbon Uptake By Land Sinkspotentials and Limitsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Ten new insights in climate science 2020 – a horizon scan

et al. 2021

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Non-technical summary We summarize some of the past year's most important findings within climate change-related research. New research has improved our understanding of Earth's sensitivity to carbon dioxide, finds that permafrost thaw could release more carbon emissions than expected and that the uptake of carbon in tropical ecosystems is weakening. Adverse impacts on human society include increasing water shortages and impacts on mental health. Options for solutions emerge from rethinking economic models, rights-based litigation, strengthened governance systems and a new social contract. The disruption caused by COVID-19 could be seized as an opportunity for positive change, directing economic stimulus towards sustainable investments. Technical summary A synthesis is made of ten fields within climate science where there have been significant advances since mid-2019, through an expert elicitation process with broad disciplinary scope. Findings include: (1) a better understanding of equilibrium climate sensitivity; (2) abrupt thaw as an accelerator of carbon release from permafrost; (3) changes to global and regional land carbon sinks; (4) impacts of climate change on water crises, including equity perspectives; (5) adverse effects on mental health from climate change; (6) immediate effects on climate of the COVID-19 pandemic and requirements for recovery packages to deliver on the Paris Agreement; (7) suggested long-term changes to governance and a social contract to address climate change, learning from the current pandemic, (8) updated positive cost–benefit ratio and new perspectives on the potential for green growth in the short- and long-term perspective; (9) urban electrification as a strategy to move towards low-carbon energy systems and (10) rights-based litigation as an increasingly important method to address climate change, with recent clarifications on the legal standing and representation of future generations. Social media summary Stronger permafrost thaw, COVID-19 effects and growing mental health impacts among highlights of latest climate science.

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Increased control of vegetation on global terrestrial energy fluxes

Cited by 215 publications

References 47 publications

Impact of Vegetation Leaf Area Change on Global Terrestrial Water Storage in Recent 30 Years Based on GRACE and Reconstruction Data

Impact of Vegetation Leaf Area Change on Global Terrestrial Water Storage in Recent 30 Years Based on GRACE and Reconstruction Data

Evaluation of Evapotranspiration Models Using Different LAI and Meteorological Forcing Data from 1982 to 2017

Ten new insights in climate science 2020 – a horizon scan

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