Evaluation of land surface models in reproducing satellite derived leaf area index over the high-latitude northern hemisphere. Part II: Earth system models

PublishedJournal ArticleLeaf Area Index (LAI) is a key parameter in the Earth System Models (ESMs) since it strongly affects land-surface boundary conditions and the exchange of matter and energy with the atmosphere. Observations and data products derived from satellite remote sensing are important for the validation and evaluation of ESMs from regional to global scales. Several decades' worth of satellite data products are now available at global scale which represents a unique opportunity to contrast observations against model results. The objective of this study is to assess whether ESMs correctly reproduce the spatial variability of LAI when compared with satellite data and to compare the length of the growing season in the different models with the satellite data. To achieve this goal we analyse outputs from 11 coupled carbon-climate models that are based on the set of new global model simulations planned in support of the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report. We focus on the average LAI and the length of the growing season on Northern Hemisphere over the period 1986-2005. Additionally we compare the results with previous analyses (Part I) of uncoupled land surface models (LSMs) to assess the relative contribution of vegetation and climatic drivers on the correct representation of LAI. Our results show that models tend to overestimate the average values of LAI and have a longer growing season due to the later dormancy. The similarities with the uncoupled models suggest that representing the correct vegetation fraction with the associated parameterizations; is more important in controlling the distribution and value of LAI than the climatic variables. © 2013 by the authors.This work was funded by the European Commission’s 7th Framework Programme under Grant Agreements number 238366 (GREENCYCLESII project) and 282672 (EMBRACE project)

Biomass burning related ozone damage on vegetation over the Amazon forest: A model sensitivity study

The HadGEM2 earth system climate model was used to assess the impact of biomass burning on surface ozone concentrations over the Amazon forest and its impact on vegetation, under present-day climate conditions. Here we consider biomass burning emissions from wildfires, deforestation fires, agricultural forest burning, and residential and commercial combustion. Simulated surface ozone concentration is evaluated against observations taken at two sites in the Brazilian Amazon forest for years 2010 to 2012. The model is able to reproduce the observed diurnal cycle of surface ozone mixing ratio at the two sites, but overestimates the magnitude of the monthly averaged hourly measurements by 5-15 ppb for each available month at one of the sites. We vary biomass burning emissions over South America by ±20, 40, 60, 80 and 100% to quantify the modelled impact of biomass burning on surface ozone concentrations and ozone damage on vegetation productivity over the Amazon forest. We used the ozone damage scheme in the "high" sensitivity mode to give an upper limit for this effect. Decreasing South American biomass burning emissions by 100% (i.e. to zero) reduces surface ozone concentrations (by about 15 ppb during the biomass burning season) and suggests a 15% increase in monthly mean net primary productivity averaged over the Amazon forest, with local increases up to 60%. The simulated impact of ozone damage from present-day biomass burning on vegetation productivity is about 230 TgC yr-1. Taking into account that uncertainty in these estimates is substantial, this ozone damage impact over the Amazon forest is of the same order of magnitude as the release of carbon dioxide due to fire in South America; in effect it potentially doubles the impact of biomass burning on the carbon cycle.This work was funded by the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) South AMerican Biomass Burning Analysis (SAMBBA) project grant code NE/J010057/1. The UK Met Office contribution to this project was funded by the DECC under the Hadley Centre Climate Programme contract (GA01101). The Brazilian contribution was funded by Fundacao de Amparo a Pesquisa do Estado de Sao Paulo (FAPESP, projects 08/58100-2 and 12/14437-9). We thank INPA (Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas da Amazonia) for the coordination work of the LBA Experiment. We thank USP technicians for the support on data sampling: Alcides Ribeiro, Ana Lucia Loureiro, Fernando Morais and Fabio Jorge

Accuracy of Vitalograph lung monitor as a screening test for COPD in primary care.

Microspirometry may be useful as the second stage of a screening pathway among patients reporting respiratory symptoms. We assessed sensitivity and specificity of the Vitalograph® lung monitor compared with post-bronchodilator confirmatory spirometry (ndd Easy on-PC) among primary care chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) patients within the Birmingham COPD cohort. We report a case-control analysis within 71 general practices in the UK. Eligible patients were aged ≥40 years who were either on a clinical COPD register or reported chronic respiratory symptoms on a questionnaire. Participants performed pre- and post-bronchodilator microspirometry, prior to confirmatory spirometry. Out of the 544 participants, COPD was confirmed in 337 according to post-bronchodilator confirmatory spirometry. Pre-bronchodilator, using the LLN as a cut-point, the lung monitor had a sensitivity of 50.5% (95% CI 45.0%, 55.9%) and a specificity of 99.0% (95% CI 96.6%, 99.9%) in our sample. Using a fixed ratio of FEV1/FEV6 < 0.7 to define obstruction in the lung monitor, sensitivity increased (58.8%; 95% CI 53.0, 63.8) while specificity was virtually identical (98.6%; 95% CI 95.8, 99.7). Within our sample, the optimal cut-point for the lung monitor was FEV1/FEV6 < 0.78, with sensitivity of 82.8% (95% CI 78.3%, 86.7%) and specificity of 85.0% (95% CI 79.4%, 89.6%). Test performance of the lung monitor was unaffected by bronchodilation. The lung monitor could be used in primary care without a bronchodilator using a simple ratio of FEV1/FEV6 as part of a screening pathway for COPD among patients reporting respiratory symptoms

Investigating the response of leaf area index to droughts in southern African vegetation using observations and model-simulations

In many regions of the world, frequent and continual dry spells are exacerbating drought conditions, which have severe impacts on vegetation biomes. Vegetation in southern Africa is among the most affected by drought. Here, we assessed the spatiotemporal characteristics of meteorological drought in southern Africa using the standardized precipitation evapotranspiration index (SPEI) over a 30-year period (1982–2011). The severity and the effects of droughts on vegetation productiveness were examined at different drought timescales (1- to 24-month timescales). In this study, we characterized vegetation using the leaf area index (LAI) after evaluating its relationship with the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI). Correlating the LAI with the SPEI, we found that the LAI responds strongly (r=0.6) to drought over the central and southeastern parts of the region, with weaker impacts (r<0.4) over parts of Madagascar, Angola, and the western parts of South Africa. Furthermore, the latitudinal distribution of LAI responses to drought indicates a similar temporal pattern but different magnitudes across timescales. The results of the study also showed that the seasonal response across different southern African biomes varies in magnitude and occurs mostly at shorter to intermediate timescales. The semi-desert biome strongly correlates (r=0.95) to drought as characterized by the SPEI at a 6-month timescale in the MAM (March–May; summer) season, while the tropical forest biome shows the weakest response (r=0.35) at a 6-month timescale in the DJF (December–February; hot and rainy) season. In addition, we found that the spatial pattern of change of LAI and SPEI are mostly similar during extremely dry and wet years, with the highest anomaly observed in the dry year of 1991, and we found different temporal variability in global and regional responses across different biomes. We also examined how well an ensemble of state-of-the-art dynamic global vegetation models (DGVMs) simulate the LAI and its response to drought. The spatial and seasonal response of the LAI to drought is mostly overestimated in the DGVM multimodel ensemble compared to the response calculated for the observation-based data. The correlation coefficient values for the multimodel ensemble are as high as 0.76 (annual) over South Africa and 0.98 in the MAM season over the temperate grassland biome. Furthermore, the DGVM model ensemble shows positive biases (3 months or longer) in the simulation of spatial distribution of drought timescales and overestimates the seasonal distribution timescales. The results of this study highlight the areas to target for further development of DGVMs and can be used to improve the models' capability in simulating the drought–vegetation relationship

Importance of soil thermal regime in terrestrial ecosystem carbon dynamics in the circumpolar north

© The Author(s), 2016. This is the author's version of the work and is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Global and Planetary Change 142 (2016): 28-40, doi:10.1016/j.gloplacha.2016.04.011.In the circumpolar north (45-90°N), permafrost plays an important role in vegetation and carbon (C) dynamics. Permafrost thawing has been accelerated by the warming climate and exerts a positive feedback to climate through increasing soil C release to the atmosphere. To evaluate the influence of permafrost on C dynamics, changes in soil temperature profiles should be considered in global C models. This study incorporates a sophisticated soil thermal model (STM) into a dynamic global vegetation model (LPJ-DGVM) to improve simulations of changes in soil temperature profiles from the ground surface to 3 m depth, and its impacts on C pools and fluxes during the 20th and 21st centuries.With cooler simulated soil temperatures during the summer, LPJ-STM estimates ~0.4 Pg C yr-1 lower present-day heterotrophic respiration but ~0.5 Pg C yr-1 higher net primary production than the original LPJ model resulting in an additional 0.8 to 1.0 Pg C yr-1 being sequestered in circumpolar ecosystems. Under a suite of projected warming scenarios, we show that the increasing active layer thickness results in the mobilization of permafrost C, which contributes to a more rapid increase in heterotrophic respiration in LPJ-STM compared to the stand-alone LPJ model. Except under the extreme warming conditions, increases in plant production due to warming and rising CO2, overwhelm the enhanced ecosystem respiration so that both boreal forest and arctic tundra ecosystems remain a net C sink over the 21st century. This study highlights the importance of considering changes in the soil thermal regime when quantifying the C budget in the circumpolar north.This research is supported by funded projects to Q. Z. National Science Foundation (NSF- 1028291 and NSF- 0919331), the NSF Carbon and Water in the Earth Program (NSF-0630319), the NASA Land Use and Land Cover Change program (NASA- NNX09AI26G), and Department of Energy (DE-FG02-08ER64599).2017-05-0

Theory of Threading Edge and Screw Dislocations in GaN

The atomic structures, electrical properties, and line energies for threading screw and threading edge dislocations of wurtzite GaN are calculated within the local-density approximation. Both dislocations are electrically inactive with a band gap free from deep levels. These results are understood to arise from relaxed core structures which are similar to (1010) surfaces

The carbon cycle in Mexico: past, present and future of C stocks and fluxes

PublishedThe Supplement related to this article is available online at doi:10.5194/bg-13-223-2016-supplement.We modeled the carbon (C) cycle in Mexico with a process-based approach. We used different available products (satellite data, field measurements, models and flux towers) to estimate C stocks and fluxes in the country at three different time frames: present (defined as the period 2000–2005), the past century (1901–2000) and the remainder of this century (2010–2100). Our estimate of the gross primary productivity (GPP) for the country was 2137 ± 1023 TgC yr−1 and a total C stock of 34 506 ± 7483 TgC, with 20 347 ± 4622 TgC in vegetation and 14 159 ± 3861 in the soil. Contrary to other current estimates for recent decades, our results showed that Mexico was a C sink over the period 1990–2009 (+31 TgC yr−1) and that C accumulation over the last century amounted to 1210 ± 1040 TgC. We attributed this sink to the CO2 fertilization effect on GPP, which led to an increase of 3408 ± 1060 TgC, while both climate and land use reduced the country C stocks by −458 ± 1001 and −1740 ± 878 TgC, respectively. Under different future scenarios, the C sink will likely continue over the 21st century, with decreasing C uptake as the climate forcing becomes more extreme. Our work provides valuable insights on relevant driving processes of the C cycle such as the role of drought in drylands (e.g., grasslands and shrublands) and the impact of climate change on the mean residence time of soil C in tropical ecosystems.The lead author (G. Murray-Tortarolo) thanks CONACYT-CECTI, the University of Exeter and Secretaría de Educación Pública (SEP) for their funding of this project. The authors extend their thanks to Carlos Ortiz Solorio and to the Colegio de Posgraduados for the field soil data and to the Alianza Redd+ Mexico for the field biomass data. This project would not have been possible without the valuable data from the CMIP5 models. A. Arneth, G. Murray-Tortarolo, A. Wiltshire and S. Sitch acknowledge the support of the European Commission-funded project LULCC4C (grant no. 603542). A. Wiltshire was partsupported by the Joint UK DECC/Defra Met Office Hadley Centre Climate Programme (GA01101)

On the causes of trends in the seasonal amplitude of atmospheric CO2

This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Wiley via the DOI in this recordNo consensus has yet been reached on the major factors driving the observed increase in the seasonal amplitude of atmospheric CO2 in the northern latitudes. In this study, we used atmospheric CO2 records from 26 northern hemisphere stations with a temporal coverage longer than 15 years, and an atmospheric transport model prescribed with net biome productivity (NBP) from an ensemble of nine terrestrial ecosystem models, to attribute change in the seasonal amplitude of atmospheric CO2 . We found significant (p 50°N), consistent with previous observations that the amplitude increased faster at Barrow (Arctic) than at Mauna Loa (subtropics). The multi-model ensemble mean (MMEM) shows that the response of ecosystem carbon cycling to rising CO2 concentration (eCO2 ) and climate change are dominant drivers of the increase in AMPP-T and AMPT-P in the high latitudes. At the Barrow station, the observed increase of AMPP-T and AMPT-P over the last 33 years is explained by eCO2 (39% and 42%) almost equally than by climate change (32% and 35%). The increased carbon losses during the months with a net carbon release in response to eCO2 are associated with higher ecosystem respiration due to the increase in carbon storage caused by eCO2 during carbon uptake period. Air-sea CO2 fluxes (10% for AMPP-T and 11% for AMPT-P ) and the impacts of land-use change (marginally significant 3% for AMPP-T and 4% for AMPT-P ) also contributed to the CO2 measured at Barrow, highlighting the role of these factors in regulating seasonal changes in the global carbon cycle.This study was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (41530528), the BELSPO STEREO project ECOPROPHET (SR00334), the 111 Project (B14001), and the National Youth Top‐notch Talent Support Program in China. Philippe Ciais, Ivan A Janssens and Josep Peñuelas acknowledge support from the European Research Council through Synergy grant ERC‐2013‐SyG‐610028 “P‐IMBALANCE”