Subheading: Reduced carbon uptake by soils during the 21st century
One Sentence Summary:Global radiocarbon observations show that Earth system models, lacking carbon stabilization mechanisms, overestimate the 21st century soil carbon sink by almost two-fold.
Abstract:Soil is the largest terrestrial carbon reservoir and may influence the sign and magnitude of carbon cycle-climate feedbacks. Changes in soil carbon-the largest terrestrial carbon reservoir-may influence the sign and magnitude of climate-carbon cycle feedbacks. Many Earth system models (ESMs) estimate a significant soil carbon sink by 2100, yet the underlying carbon dynamics determining this response have not been systematically tested against observations. Using We used 14 C data from 157 globally distributed soil profiles sampled to 1 m depth, we to show that ESMs underestimated the mean age of soil carbon by more than six-fold (430±50 years vs. 3100±1800 years). Consequently, ESMs overestimated the carbon sequestration potential of soils 21 st century soil carbon sequestration by nearly two-fold (40 ± 27%). These biasesinconsistencies suggest that ESMs must better represent carbon stabilization processes and the turnover time of slow and passive reservoirs when simulating future atmospheric CO 2 dynamics.To improve simulations of future atmospheric CO 2 and carbon storage, ESMs must better represent stabilization processes and turnover times for soil carbon pools.Keywords: soil carbon, earth system models, carbon-concentration feedback, mean age, Rapid rates of carbon sequestration in ESMs contrast with findings from CO 2 and warming experiments (7, 8) as well as multiple theoretical and observational constraints indicating slow (millennial) rates of soil organic carbon accrual and turnover (9-14). Model uncertainty-as measured by inter-model spread-is high for soil carbon turnover time (τ) and exceeds the uncertainty estimated for carbon uptake through gross primary production (GPP) (15, 16).In coupled model simulations, the relative sink strength (i.e. percentage change in soil carbon) depends on the responses of net primary production (NPP) and soil carbon dynamics to increasing atmospheric CO 2 concentrations and to a lesser extent climate change (5). Elevated warms the climate, which tends to accelerate soil carbon turnover and reduce carbon storage (the carbon-climate feedback) (17,18). Although these feedbacks oppose one another, the carbonconcentration feedback is more than 4 times greater on average than the carbon-climate feedback in current ESMs at the global scale (3). Differences in the representation of elevated CO 2 versus climate effects on ecosystem processes result in substantial variation in soil carbon sequestration estimates (19) ( Table S1).Without a strong carbon-concentration feedbacks, ESMs would likely project smaller gains or larger losses of soil carbon over the 21 st century. Our aim was to constrain the magnitude of the soil carbon-concentration feedback with soil radiocarbon observations. Radiocarbon content can b...