the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
| 19 Jan 2024
Fire Weather Compromises Forestation-reliant Climate Mitigation Pathways
Abstract. Forestation can contribute to climate change mitigation. However, an increasing frequency and intensity of climate extremes is posed to have profound impact on forests, and consequently on the mitigation potential of forestation efforts. In this perspective, we critically assess forestation-reliant climate mitigation scenarios from five different Integrated Assessment Models (IAMs) by show-casing the spatially explicit exposure of forests to fire weather and the simulated increase in global annual burned area. We provide a detailed description of the feedback from climate change to forest carbon uptake in IAMs. Few IAMs are currently accounting for feedback mechanisms like loss from fire disturbance. Consequently many forestation areas proposed by IAM scenarios will be exposed to fire-promoting weather conditions and without costly prevention measures might be object to frequent burning. We conclude that the actual climate mitigation portfolio in IAM scenarios is subject to substantial uncertainty and that the risk of overly optimistic estimates of negative emission potential of forestation should be avoided. As a way forward we propose how to integrate more detailed climate information when modeling climate mitigation pathways heavily relying on forestation.
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RC1: 'Comment on egusphere-2024-15', Anonymous Referee #1, 10 Feb 2024
Carbon sink is a crucial strategy for mitigating the effects of climate change, but wildfires have multiple perturbations to vegetation carbon storage. The authors simulated forestation-dependent climate mitigation scenarios using five integrated assessment models. The burned area caused by fire weather was projected over future forested regions. While the topic is very interesting and relevant to the scope of EGUsphere, the MS suffers from several major weaknesses that need to be addressed.
Introduction:
1) The literature review section should not simply list what the other researchers have done. I suggest that the authors briefly discuss how the problems addressed by previous studies advance the research topic here.
2) The authors thoroughly discussed the mechanisms of wildfires affecting carbon sinks. It would be useful to add more recent data on how much of the global carbon sink is affected by wildfires.
3) The last paragraph: ‘How to set up and how to improve the experiment’ is not an appropriate scientific question. I suggest reorganizing this paragraph.
Results:
1) The 2090 fire risk for MESSAGE-GLOBIOM and REMIND-MAgPIE is lower than that during 2050 in Figure 4a, but in Figure 4b the results are reversed. It is confusing.
2) The multi-model results reveal a less than 35% increase of FWI in 2090, but the increase in the burned area could be close to 80% (Figure 4a, b). If planted trees are greatly likely to be at risk of fire, are they still needed? If they are needed, how can they be protected from fire based on your results? I suggest the authors briefly discuss it.
3) There are large differences between the projected and observed forest areas in 2020 (Figure 1). There are also large differences in the magnitudes and patterns of projections from different models (Figure 5), although they all show an upward risk. How can these results be credible?
4) Figure 5 sets values from -0.5 to 0.5 to the same color, which does not help distinguish the areas of decreasing FWI.
Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2024-15-RC1 - AC1: 'Reply on RC1', Felix Jäger, 20 Mar 2024
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RC2: 'Comment on egusphere-2024-15', Anonymous Referee #2, 11 Feb 2024
General:
This paper investigates the feedback mechanisms between climate change and forest carbon sequestration across five integrated assessment models (IAMs), where wildfires play a significant role in influencing the accumulation of carbon within forests. The Canadian Fire Weather Index (FWI) is a pivotal metric to assess potential fire risk. The subject matter is particularly intriguing for discussion, given that contemporary research tends to concentrate more on either afforestation efforts or the impacts of exacerbated wildfire weather conditions. Several minor points need to be addressed to elucidate the central concept more effectively.
- The introductory section outlines the advancements and constraints of current research, but seems inadequacy to explicitly establish strong relationships among these various aspects.
- In Section 3, the authors employ FWI instead of alternative fire impact metrics due to its dependency solely on atmospheric conditions, rendering it more resilient. Moreover, FWI exhibits a positive interannual correlation across various forested regions. However, it is confusing that the calculated weighted mean value does not provide adequate support for the role FWI plays in serving as a proxy for wildfire potential. To improve this, it would be beneficial if the authors:
- Conduct a comparative analysis between FWI and other existing fire weather index systems.
- Concentrate their focus on forest areas that display notably high correlations.
- Several studies (ref1, ref2) have demonstrated that anticipated changes in fire weather and ongoing wildfire activities can drive long-term shifts in forest species composition and lead to significant transitions from woody vegetation cover to less dense vegetative types such as scrubland and grassland. In this context, I am interested to know how the IAMs in this paper address or account for these vegetation dynamics and their implications on the ecosystem.
- In figure 5, the value between -0.5 and 0.5 was set to the same group in the color bar, demonstrating very little information.
Ref1. Mekonnen, Z.A., Riley, W.J., Randerson, J.T. et al. Expansion of high-latitude deciduous forests driven by interactions between climate warming and fire. Nat. Plants 5, 952–958 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41477-019-0495-8
Ref2. Baudena, M., Santana, V.M., Baeza, M.J., Bautista, S., Eppinga, M.B., Hemerik, L., Garcia Mayor, A., Rodriguez, F., Valdecantos, A., Vallejo, V.R., Vasques, A. and Rietkerk, M. (2023), Increased aridity drives post-fire recovery of Mediterranean forests towards open shrublands. New Phytol, 239: 2416-2417. https://doi.org/10.1111/nph.19012
Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2024-15-RC2 - AC2: 'Reply on RC2', Felix Jäger, 20 Mar 2024
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