干旱区生态环境知识资源中心

Earth system models (ESMs) from phase 5 of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP5) were diagnosed as having large discrepancies in their land carbon turnover times, which partly explains the differences in the future projections of terrestrial carbon storage from the models. Carvalhais et al. focused on evaluation of model-based ecosystem carbon turnover times tau(eco) in relation with climate factors. In this study, tau(eco) from models was analyzed separately for biomass and soil carbon pools, and its spatial dependency upon temperature and precipitation was evaluated using observational datasets. The results showed that 8 of 14 models slightly underestimated global biomass carbon turnover times tau(veg) (modeled median of 8 yr vs observed 11 yr), and 11 models grossly underestimated the soil carbon turnover time tau(soil) (modeled median of 16 yr vs observed 26 yr). The underestimation of global carbon turnover times in ESMs was mainly due to values for tau(veg) and tau(soil) being too low in the high northern latitudes and arid and semiarid regions. In addition, the models did not capture the observed spatial climate sensitivity of carbon turnover time in these regions. Modeled tau(veg) and tau(soil) values were generally weakly correlated with climate variables, implying that differences between carbon cycle models primarily originated from structural differences rather than from differences in atmospheric climate models (i.e., related to temperature and precipitation). This study indicates that most models do not reproduce the underlying processes driving regional tau(veg) and tau(soil), highlighting the need for improving the model parameterization and adding key processes such as biotic disturbances and permafrost-carbon climate responses.