Emergent constraints on climate-carbon cycle feedbacks in the CMIP5 Earth system models

Journal ArticleAn emergent linear relationship between the long-term sensitivity of tropical land carbon storage to climate warming (γLT) and the short-term sensitivity of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) to interannual temperature variability (γIAV) has previously been identified by Cox et al. (2013) across an ensemble of Earth system models (ESMs) participating in the Coupled Climate-Carbon Cycle Model Intercomparison Project (C4MIP). Here we examine whether such a constraint also holds for a new set of eight ESMs participating in Phase 5 of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project. A wide spread in tropical land carbon storage is found for the quadrupling of atmospheric CO2, which is of the order of 252 ± 112 GtC when carbon-climate feedbacks are enabled. Correspondingly, the spread in γLT is wide (-49 ± 40 GtC/K) and thus remains one of the key uncertainties in climate projections. A tight correlation is found between the long-term sensitivity of tropical land carbon and the short-term sensitivity of atmospheric CO2 (γLT versus γIAV), which enables the projections to be constrained with observations. The observed short-term sensitivity of CO2 (-4.4 ± 0.9 GtC/yr/K) sharpens the range of γLT to -44 ± 14 GtC/K, which overlaps with the probability density function derived from the C4MIP models (-53 ± 17 GtC/K) by Cox et al. (2013), even though the lines relating γLT and γIAV differ in the two cases. Emergent constraints of this type provide a means to focus ESM evaluation against observations on the metrics most relevant to projections of future climate change. Key Points Tropical land carbon loss is a key uncertainty in climate change projections CO2 interannual variability is linearly related to tropical carbon loss in CMIP5 Observed variability in CO2 constrains projections of future carbon losses ©2014. American Geophysical Union. All Rights Reserved.European Commission's Seventh Framework Programme, EMBRACE and ESMVa

Evaluation of soil carbon simulation in CMIP6 Earth system models

The response of soil carbon represents one of the key uncertainties in future climate change. The ability of Earth system models (ESMs) to simulate present-day soil carbon is therefore vital for reliably estimating global carbon budgets required for Paris Agreement targets. In this study CMIP6 ESMs are evaluated against empirical datasets to assess the ability of each model to simulate soil carbon and related controls: net primary productivity (NPP) and soil carbon turnover time (τs). Comparing CMIP6 with the previous generation of models (CMIP5), a lack of consistency in modelled soil carbon remains, particularly the underestimation of northern high-latitude soil carbon stocks. There is a robust improvement in the simulation of NPP in CMIP6 compared with CMIP5; however, an unrealistically high correlation with soil carbon stocks remains, suggesting the potential for an overestimation of the long-term terrestrial carbon sink. Additionally, the same improvements are not seen in the simulation of τs. These results suggest that much of the uncertainty associated with modelled soil carbon stocks can be attributed to the simulation of below-ground processes, and greater emphasis is required on improving the representation of below-ground soil processes in future developments of models. These improvements would help to reduce the uncertainty in projected carbon release from global soils under climate change and to increase confidence in the carbon budgets associated with different levels of global warming.</p

Cognitive biases to healthy and unhealthy food words predict change in BMI

The current study explored the predictive value of cognitive biases to food cues (assessed by emotional Stroop and dot probe tasks) on weight change over a 1-year period. This was a longitudinal study with undergraduate students (N = 102) living in shared student accommodation. After controlling for the effects of variables associated with weight (e.g., physical activity, stress, restrained eating, external eating, and emotional eating), no effects of cognitive bias were found with the dot probe. However, for the emotional Stroop, cognitive bias to unhealthy foods predicted an increase in BMI whereas cognitive bias to healthy foods was associated with a decrease in BMI. Results parallel findings in substance abuse research; cognitive biases appear to predict behavior change. Accordingly, future research should consider strategies for attentional retraining, encouraging individuals to reorient attention away from unhealthy eating cues

Non-Markovian Stochastic Resonance

The phenomenological linear response theory of non-Markovian Stochastic Resonance (SR) is put forward for stationary two-state renewal processes. In terms of a derivation of a non-Markov regression theorem we evaluate the characteristic SR-quantifiers; i.e. the spectral power amplification (SPA) and the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), respectively. In clear contrast to Markovian SR, a characteristic benchmark of genuine non-Markovian SR is its distinctive dependence of the SPA and SNR on small (adiabatic) driving frequencies; particularly, the adiabatic SNR becomes strongly suppressed over its Markovian counterpart. This non-Markovian SR theory is elucidated for a fractal gating dynamics of a potassium ion channel possessing an infinite variance of closed sojourn times.Comment: 4 pages, 1 figur

Spatial and temporal variations in plant water-use efficiency inferred from tree-ring, eddy covariance and atmospheric observations

Plant water-use efficiency (WUE), which is the ratio of the uptake of carbon dioxide through photosynthesis to the loss of water through transpiration, is a very useful metric of the functioning of the land biosphere. WUE is expected to increase with atmospheric CO2, but to decline with increasing atmospheric evaporative demand – which can arisefrom increases in near-surface temperature or decreases in relative humidity.We have used Δ13C measurements from tree rings, along witheddy covariance measurements from Fluxnet sites, to estimate thesensitivities of WUE to changes in CO2 and atmospheric humidity deficit.This enables us to reconstruct fractional changes in WUE, based on changes inatmospheric climate and CO2, for the entire period of the instrumental global climate record. We estimate that overall WUE increased from 1900 to2010 by 48 ± 22 %, which is more than double that simulated by thelatest Earth System Models. This long-term trend is largely driven byincreases in CO2, but significant inter-annual variability and regional differences are evident due to variations in temperature and relativehumidity. There are several highly populated regions, such as western Europeand East Asia, where the rate of increase of WUE has declined sharply in thelast 2 decades. Our data-based analysis indicates increases in WUE thattypically exceed those simulated by Earth System Models – implying thatthese models are either underestimating increases in photosynthesis orunderestimating reductions in transpiration

Orbital Localization and Delocalization Effects in the U 5f^2 Configuration: Impurity Problem

Anderson models, based on quantum chemical studies of the molecule of U(C_8H_8)_2, are applied to investigate the problem of an U impurity in a metal. The special point here is that the U 5f-orbitals are divided into two subsets: an almost completely localized set and a considerably delocalized one. Due to the crystal field, both localized and delocalized U 5f-orbitals affect the low-energy physics. A numerical renormalization group study shows that every fixed point is characterized by a residual local spin and a phase shift. The latter changes between 0 and \pi/2, which indicates the competition between two different fixed points. Such a competition between the different local spins at the fixed points reflects itself in the impurity magnetic susceptibility at high temperatures. These different features cannot be obtained if the special characters of U 5f-orbitals are neglected.Comment: 4 pages, REVTeX, email to [email protected]