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Journal ArticleDOI

Impact of changes in diffuse radiation on the global land carbon sink

23 Apr 2009-Nature (Nature Publishing Group)-Vol. 458, Iss: 7241, pp 1014-1017
TL;DR: The authors used the HadGEM2-A general circulation model to simulate the effect of late twentieth century "global dimming" and associated increases in the diffuse radiation fraction on global carbon storage.
Abstract: Increased exposure to solar radiation generally increases plant photosynthesis, but not all forms of radiation are equally effective. In particular, field studies have demonstrated that a given amount of diffuse radiation leads to more fixed carbon than direct radiation. Mercado et al. use the HadGEM2-A general circulation model to simulate the effect of late twentieth century 'global dimming' and associated increases in the diffuse radiation fraction on global carbon storage. They find that increases in diffuse radiation enhanced the terrestrial carbon sink by about 25%. Paradoxically, reducing anthropogenic pollution in the future would reduce this diffuse radiation effect, thereby creating a positive feedback to global warming. More radiation generally increases vegetation photosynthesis, but field studies show that a given amount of diffuse radiation leads to more fixed carbon than direct radiation. Mercado and colleagues simulate the effect of late twentieth century increases in the diffuse radiation fraction, and find that the terrestrial carbon sink is enhanced by about 25% —paradoxically, reducing future anthropogenic pollution will reduce this diffuse radiation effect, creating a positive feedback to global warming. Plant photosynthesis tends to increase with irradiance. However, recent theoretical and observational studies have demonstrated that photosynthesis is also more efficient under diffuse light conditions1,2,3,4,5. Changes in cloud cover or atmospheric aerosol loadings, arising from either volcanic or anthropogenic emissions, alter both the total photosynthetically active radiation reaching the surface and the fraction of this radiation that is diffuse, with uncertain overall effects on global plant productivity and the land carbon sink. Here we estimate 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’ period6,7,8, enhanced the land carbon sink by approximately one-quarter between 1960 and 1999. However, under a climate mitigation scenario for the twenty-first century in which sulphate aerosols decline before atmospheric CO2 is stabilized, this ‘diffuse-radiation’ fertilization effect declines rapidly to near zero by the end of the twenty-first century.

Summary (1 min read)

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Summary

  • Plant photosynthesis tends to increase with irradiance.
  • 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 the authors 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.
  • The authors estimate that variations in diffuse fraction, associated largely with the "global dimming" period 6-8 , enhanced the land carbon sink by approximately a quarter.

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Impact of changes in diuse 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 diuse radiation on the global land carbon sink.
Nature, 458 (7241). pp. 1014-1017. ISSN 0028-0836 doi:
https://doi.org/10.1038/nature07949 Available at
https://centaur.reading.ac.uk/30576/
It is advisable to refer to the publishers version if you intend to cite from the
work. See Guidance on citing
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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

Citations
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Book ChapterDOI
01 Jan 2014
TL;DR: Myhre et al. as discussed by the authors presented the contribution of Working Group I to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 2013: Anthropogenic and Natural Radiative forcing.
Abstract: This chapter should be cited as: Myhre, G., D. Shindell, F.-M. Bréon, W. Collins, J. Fuglestvedt, J. Huang, D. Koch, J.-F. Lamarque, D. Lee, B. Mendoza, T. Nakajima, A. Robock, G. Stephens, T. Takemura and H. Zhang, 2013: Anthropogenic and Natural Radiative Forcing. In: Climate Change 2013: The Physical Science Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [Stocker, T.F., D. Qin, G.-K. Plattner, M. Tignor, S.K. Allen, J. Boschung, A. Nauels, Y. Xia, V. Bex and P.M. Midgley (eds.)]. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, United Kingdom and New York, NY, USA. Coordinating Lead Authors: Gunnar Myhre (Norway), Drew Shindell (USA)

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TL;DR: Estimates of spatially distributed GPP and its covariation with climate can help improve coupled climate–carbon cycle process models.
Abstract: Terrestrial gross primary production (GPP) is the largest global CO(2) flux driving several ecosystem functions. We provide an observation-based estimate of this flux at 123 +/- 8 petagrams of carbon per year (Pg C year(-1)) using eddy covariance flux data and various diagnostic models. Tropical forests and savannahs account for 60%. GPP over 40% of the vegetated land is associated with precipitation. State-of-the-art process-oriented biosphere models used for climate predictions exhibit a large between-model variation of GPP's latitudinal patterns and show higher spatial correlations between GPP and precipitation, suggesting the existence of missing processes or feedback mechanisms which attenuate the vegetation response to climate. Our estimates of spatially distributed GPP and its covariation with climate can help improve coupled climate-carbon cycle process models.

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Abstract: For base year 2010, anthropogenic activities created ~210 (190 to 230) TgN of reactive nitrogen Nr from N2. This human-caused creation of reactive nitrogen in 2010 is at least 2 times larger than the rate of natural terrestrial creation of ~58 TgN (50 to 100 TgN yr−1) (Table 6.9, Section 1a). Note that the estimate of natural terrestrial biological fixation (58 TgN yr−1) is lower than former estimates (100 TgN yr−1, Galloway et al., 2004), but the ranges overlap, 50 to 100 TgN yr−1 vs. 90 to 120 TgN yr−1, respectively). Of this created reactive nitrogen, NOx and NH3 emissions from anthropogenic sources are about fourfold greater than natural emissions (Table 6.9, Section 1b). A greater portion of the NH3 emissions is deposited to the continents rather than to the oceans, relative to the deposition of NOy, due to the longer atmospheric residence time of the latter. These deposition estimates are lower limits, as they do not include organic nitrogen species. New model and measurement information (Kanakidou et al., 2012) suggests that incomplete inclusion of emissions and atmospheric chemistry of reduced and oxidized organic nitrogen components in current models may lead to systematic underestimates of total global reactive nitrogen deposition by up to 35% (Table 6.9, Section 1c). Discharge of reactive nitrogen to the coastal oceans is ~45 TgN yr−1 (Table 6.9, Section 1d). Denitrification converts Nr back to atmospheric N2. The current estimate for the production of atmospheric N2 is 110 TgN yr−1 (Bouwman et al., 2013).

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Abstract: Efforts to control climate change require the stabilization of atmospheric CO2 concentrations. This can only be achieved through a drastic reduction of global CO2 emissions. Yet fossil fuel emissions increased by 29% between 2000 and 2008, in conjunction with increased contributions from emerging economies, from the production and international trade of goods and services, and from the use of coal as a fuel source. In contrast, emissions from land-use changes were nearly constant. Between 1959 and 2008, 43% of each year's CO2 emissions remained in the atmosphere on average; the rest was absorbed by carbon sinks on land and in the oceans. In the past 50 years, the fraction of CO2 emissions that remains in the atmosphere each year has likely increased, from about 40% to 45%, and models suggest that this trend was caused by a decrease in the uptake of CO2 by the carbon sinks in response to climate change and variability. Changes in the CO2 sinks are highly uncertain, but they could have a significant influence on future atmospheric CO2 levels. It is therefore crucial to reduce the uncertainties.

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Pierre Friedlingstein1, Pierre Friedlingstein2, Michael O'Sullivan1, Matthew W. Jones3, Robbie M. Andrew, Judith Hauck, Are Olsen, Glen P. Peters, Wouter Peters4, Wouter Peters5, Julia Pongratz6, Julia Pongratz7, Stephen Sitch2, Corinne Le Quéré3, Josep G. Canadell8, Philippe Ciais9, Robert B. Jackson10, Simone R. Alin11, Luiz E. O. C. Aragão12, Luiz E. O. C. Aragão2, Almut Arneth, Vivek K. Arora, Nicholas R. Bates13, Nicholas R. Bates14, Meike Becker, Alice Benoit-Cattin, Henry C. Bittig, Laurent Bopp15, Selma Bultan6, Naveen Chandra16, Naveen Chandra17, Frédéric Chevallier9, Louise Chini18, Wiley Evans, Liesbeth Florentie5, Piers M. Forster19, Thomas Gasser20, Marion Gehlen9, Dennis Gilfillan, Thanos Gkritzalis21, Luke Gregor22, Nicolas Gruber22, Ian Harris23, Kerstin Hartung24, Kerstin Hartung6, Vanessa Haverd8, Richard A. Houghton25, Tatiana Ilyina7, Atul K. Jain26, Emilie Joetzjer27, Koji Kadono28, Etsushi Kato, Vassilis Kitidis29, Jan Ivar Korsbakken, Peter Landschützer7, Nathalie Lefèvre30, Andrew Lenton31, Sebastian Lienert32, Zhu Liu33, Danica Lombardozzi34, Gregg Marland35, Nicolas Metzl30, David R. Munro11, David R. Munro36, Julia E. M. S. Nabel7, S. Nakaoka17, Yosuke Niwa17, Kevin D. O'Brien37, Kevin D. O'Brien11, Tsuneo Ono, Paul I. Palmer, Denis Pierrot38, Benjamin Poulter, Laure Resplandy39, Eddy Robertson40, Christian Rödenbeck7, Jörg Schwinger, Roland Séférian27, Ingunn Skjelvan, Adam J. P. Smith3, Adrienne J. Sutton11, Toste Tanhua41, Pieter P. Tans11, Hanqin Tian42, Bronte Tilbrook31, Bronte Tilbrook43, Guido R. van der Werf44, N. Vuichard9, Anthony P. Walker45, Rik Wanninkhof38, Andrew J. Watson2, David R. Willis23, Andy Wiltshire40, Wenping Yuan46, Xu Yue47, Sönke Zaehle7 
École Normale Supérieure1, University of Exeter2, Norwich Research Park3, University of Groningen4, Wageningen University and Research Centre5, Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich6, Max Planck Society7, Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation8, Université Paris-Saclay9, Stanford University10, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration11, National Institute for Space Research12, University of Southampton13, Bermuda Institute of Ocean Sciences14, PSL Research University15, Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology16, National Institute for Environmental Studies17, University of Maryland, College Park18, University of Leeds19, International Institute of Minnesota20, Flanders Marine Institute21, ETH Zurich22, University of East Anglia23, German Aerospace Center24, Woods Hole Research Center25, University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign26, University of Toulouse27, Japan Meteorological Agency28, Plymouth Marine Laboratory29, University of Paris30, Hobart Corporation31, Oeschger Centre for Climate Change Research32, Tsinghua University33, National Center for Atmospheric Research34, Appalachian State University35, University of Colorado Boulder36, University of Washington37, Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory38, Princeton University39, Met Office40, Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences41, Auburn University42, University of Tasmania43, VU University Amsterdam44, Oak Ridge National Laboratory45, Sun Yat-sen University46, Nanjing University47
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1,764 citations

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