Impact of changes in diffuse radiation on
the global land carbon sink
Article
Accepted Version
Mercado, L. M., Bellouin, N., Sitch, S., Boucher, O.,
Huntingford, C., Wild, M. and Cox, P. M. (2009) Impact of
changes in diffuse radiation on the global land carbon sink.
Nature, 458 (7241). pp. 1014-1017. ISSN 0028-0836 doi:
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Impact of Changes in Diffuse Radiation on the Global Land
Carbon Sink
Lina M. Mercado
1
, Nicolas Bellouin
2
, Stephen Sitch
2
, Olivier Boucher
2
, Chris
Huntingford
1
, Martin Wild
3
and Peter M. Cox
4
1
Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, Wallingford, Oxon OX10 8BB, UK
2
Met Office Hadley Centre, Exeter, EX1 3PB, UK
3
ETH Zurich, Institute for Atmospheric and Climate Science , CH 8092 Zurich,
Switzerland
4
School of Engineering, Computer Science and Mathematics, University of Exeter,
EX4 4QF, UK
Plant photosynthesis tends to increase with irradiance. However, recent
theoretical and observational studies have demonstrated that photosynthesis is
also more efficient under diffuse light conditions
1-5
. Changes in cloud cover or
atmospheric aerosol loadings, arising from either volcanic or anthropogenic
emissions, alter both the total Photosynthetically Active Radiation (PAR)
reaching the surface and the fraction of this radiation which is diffuse, with
uncertain overall effects on global plant productivity and the land carbon sink.
Here we estimate for the first time, the impact of variations in diffuse fraction on
the land carbon sink using a global model modified to account for the effects of
variations in both direct and diffuse radiation on canopy photosynthesis. We
estimate that variations in diffuse fraction, associated largely with the “global
dimming” period
6-8
, enhanced the land carbon sink by approximately a quarter
from 1960 to 1999. However, under a climate mitigation scenario for the 21
st
century in which sulphate aerosols decline before atmospheric CO
2
is stabilised,
this “diffuse-radiation” fertilisation effect declines rapidly to near zero by the
end of the 21
st
century.
The solar radiation reaching the Earth’s surface is the primary driver of plant photosynthesis.
Leaf photosynthesis increases non-linearly with incident PAR, saturating at light levels which
are often exceeded on bright days during the growing season (Fig 1). In clear-sky conditions, a
fraction of the plant canopy is illuminated by direct solar radiation consisting of bright
“sunflecks”, with the remaining portion of the canopy being in the shade. The sunlit fraction of
the canopy has leaves which are often light saturated and therefore have low light use
efficiency, while leaves in the shade are more light-use efficient but suffer from a lower
exposure to incoming radiation. In contrast, under cloudy or sulphate-aerosol-laden skies,
sunlight is more scattered and incoming radiation is more diffuse producing a more uniform
irradiance of the canopy with a smaller fraction of the canopy likely to be light-saturated. As a
result, canopy photosynthesis tends to be significantly more light-use efficient under diffuse
rather than direct sunlight
3
. Hence, the net effect on photosynthesis of radiation changes
associated with an increase in clouds or scattering aerosols depends on a balance between the
reduction in the overall total PAR (which tends to reduce photosynthesis) and the increase in
the diffuse fraction of the PAR (which tends to increase photosynthesis). While some global
climate-carbon cycle models include the effects of atmospheric aerosols on total irradiance and
surface temperature (e.g. ref. 9), none has accounted for the effects of clouds and aerosols on
the land carbon sink via changes in the diffuse fraction of radiation.
To account for the effects of diffuse radiation on canopy photosynthesis, we modified the
JULES land surface scheme used in the Hadley Centre climate models
10
. JULES includes a
multilayer approach to scale photosynthesis from the leaf to the canopy. In this study we also
separated each canopy layer into sunlit and shaded regions
11
. Figure 1 shows a comparison of
the simulated light response of Gross Primary Productivity (GPP) against measurements
inferred from the eddy correlation technique under direct and diffuse irradiance conditions
within a broadleaf
12
and a needleleaf temperate forest
13
. The modified JULES model is able to
reproduce the different light response curves under diffuse and direct radiation within the error
bars of the observations. A sensitivity analysis carried out for the broadleaf forest shows that
simulated GPP reaches a maximum at a diffuse fraction of 0.4 after which GPP decreases due
to a reduction in the total PAR (Fig S1).The existence of such an optimum is in agreement with
a previous modelling study for the same site
14
.
We performed multiple global simulations with JULES over the period 1901 to 2100 to assess
the impact of changing diffuse radiation on the global land carbon sink. For 1901 to 1999, we
used an observed monthly climatology of the main climate variables
15
, except direct and
diffuse total shortwave and PAR fluxes which were reconstructed using radiative transfer
calculations. The reconstruction takes into account the scattering and absorption of solar
radiation by tropospheric aerosols as simulated by the Hadley Centre Global Environmental
Model (version HadGEM2-A)
16
, a climatology of stratospheric aerosols
17
and a cloudiness
dataset
15
(see methodology). For the period 2000 to 2100 we prescribed varying atmospheric
CO
2
concentration and monthly fields of anthropogenic aerosols, following an A1B 450 ppm
CO
2
equivalent stabilization scenario relying on the A1B storyline and the methodology from
ref. 18. Under this scenario, diffuse fraction increases during the second half of the 20
th
century
and then decreases during the 21
st
century due to correspondingly increasing and decreasing