TY - JOUR
T1 - Climate mitigation from vegetation biophysical feedbacks during the past three decades
AU - Zeng, Zhenzhong
AU - Piao, Shilong
AU - Li, Laurent Z.X.
AU - Zhou, Liming
AU - Ciais, Philippe
AU - Wang, Tao
AU - Li, Yue
AU - Lian, Xu
AU - Wood, Eric F.
AU - Friedlingstein, Pierre
AU - Mao, Jiafu
AU - Estes, Lyndon D.
AU - Myneni, Ranga B.
AU - Peng, Shushi
AU - Shi, Xiaoying
AU - Seneviratne, Sonia I.
AU - Wang, Yingping
N1 - Funding Information:
This study was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (41530528 and 41561134016), National Youth Top-notch Talent Support Program in China, and the 111 Project (B14001).We thank the National Supercomputer Center in Tianjin, China (NSCC-TJ), the National Computer Center IDRIS of CNRS in France, the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation in Australia, and the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in the United States for providing computing resources.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2017 Macmillan Publishers Limited, part of Springer Nature. All rights reserved.
PY - 2017/6/1
Y1 - 2017/6/1
N2 - The surface air temperature response to vegetation changes has been studied for the extreme case of land-cover change; yet, it has never been quantified for the slow but persistent increase in leaf area index (LAI) observed over the past 30 years (Earth greening). Here we isolate the fingerprint of increasing LAI on surface air temperature using a coupled land-atmosphere global climate model prescribed with satellite LAI observations. We find that the global greening has slowed down the rise in global land-surface air temperature by 0.09 ± 0.02 °C since 1982. This net cooling effect is the sum of cooling from increased evapotranspiration (70%), changed atmospheric circulation (44%), decreased shortwave transmissivity (21%), and warming from increased longwave air emissivity (â 29%) and decreased albedo (â 6%). The global cooling originated from the regions where LAI has increased, including boreal Eurasia, Europe, India, northwest Amazonia, and the Sahel. Increasing LAI did not, however, significantly change surface air temperature in eastern North America and East Asia, where the effects of large-scale atmospheric circulation changes mask local vegetation feedbacks. Overall, the sum of biophysical feedbacks related to the greening of the Earth mitigated 12% of global land-surface warming for the past 30 years.
AB - The surface air temperature response to vegetation changes has been studied for the extreme case of land-cover change; yet, it has never been quantified for the slow but persistent increase in leaf area index (LAI) observed over the past 30 years (Earth greening). Here we isolate the fingerprint of increasing LAI on surface air temperature using a coupled land-atmosphere global climate model prescribed with satellite LAI observations. We find that the global greening has slowed down the rise in global land-surface air temperature by 0.09 ± 0.02 °C since 1982. This net cooling effect is the sum of cooling from increased evapotranspiration (70%), changed atmospheric circulation (44%), decreased shortwave transmissivity (21%), and warming from increased longwave air emissivity (â 29%) and decreased albedo (â 6%). The global cooling originated from the regions where LAI has increased, including boreal Eurasia, Europe, India, northwest Amazonia, and the Sahel. Increasing LAI did not, however, significantly change surface air temperature in eastern North America and East Asia, where the effects of large-scale atmospheric circulation changes mask local vegetation feedbacks. Overall, the sum of biophysical feedbacks related to the greening of the Earth mitigated 12% of global land-surface warming for the past 30 years.
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U2 - 10.1038/nclimate3299
DO - 10.1038/nclimate3299
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85020117833
SN - 1758-678X
VL - 7
SP - 432
EP - 436
JO - Nature Climate Change
JF - Nature Climate Change
IS - 6
ER -