the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
The biogeophysical effects of idealized land cover and land management changes in Earth System Models
Steven Johan Hertog
Felix Havermann
Inne Vanderkelen
Suqi Guo
Iris Manola
Dim Coumou
Edouard Léopold Davin
Gregory Duveiller
Quentin Lejeune
Julia Pongratz
Carl-Friedrich Schleussner
Sonia Isabelle Seneviratne
Wim Thiery
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.
Steven Johan De Hertog et al.
Status: open (until 18 Apr 2023)
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RC1: 'Comment on egusphere-2023-253', Anonymous Referee #1, 25 Feb 2023
reply
The sections affected by the issues around the incorrect figures have been addressed. The overall conclusions have not changed and I have no additional comments.
Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2023-253-RC1 -
AC1: 'Comment on egusphere-2023-253', Steven De Hertog, 27 Feb 2023
reply
For transparancy, we attach the draft corrigendum which summarizes the changes made from the previous submission (https://esd.copernicus.org/articles/13/1305/2022/esd-13-1305-2022-discussion.html) of this manuscript.
Steven Johan De Hertog et al.
Steven Johan De Hertog et al.
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