Acceleration and Counteraction of Changes in Vegetation Seasonality and Patterns using CMIP5 Projections from Different ESMs.
Abstract
Most climatological studies characterize future climate change as the evolution between a fixed current baseline and the future. Considering the pace of future climate change is however of major importance, since it may strongly influence how we experience climate hazards. To complement previous work related to the pace of temperature and precipitation changes, we propose here to study how fast vegetation seasonality and patterns of climate change evolve in different future configurations according to CMIP5 simulations of several Earth system models. The pace is defined as the difference in relevant metrics between two successive 20-year periods, i.e. with a continually moving baseline. Shifts of vegetation groups and changes in the characteristics of the seasonal cycle are considered. Both accelerate in close relationship with the warming rate regardless of the selected scenario, but they balance each other out, especially for trees in northern mid- and high-latitudes. Efforts are nevertheless strongly needed to harmonize the representation of vegetation in new versions of model inter-comparison projects, in order to properly conduct multi-model analyses related to vegetation changes.
- Publication:
-
AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2017
- Bibcode:
- 2017AGUFMGC43C1072C
- Keywords:
-
- 1622 Earth system modeling;
- GLOBAL CHANGE;
- 1632 Land cover change;
- GLOBAL CHANGE;
- 1637 Regional climate change;
- GLOBAL CHANGE;
- 1655 Water cycles;
- GLOBAL CHANGE