Journal
NATURE
Volume 544, Issue 7648, Pages 84-87Publisher
NATURE PUBLISHING GROUP
DOI: 10.1038/nature22030
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Funding
- US Department of Energy, Office of Science, Office of Terrestrial Ecosystem Sciences [DE-SC0011999]
- National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Climate Program Office's AC4 program
- Academy of Finland as part of the INQUIRE project [267442]
- H2020 project CRESCENDO [641816]
- European Research Council (ERC) early career starting grant SOLCA [338264]
- Academy of Finland (AKA) [267442, 267442] Funding Source: Academy of Finland (AKA)
- U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) [DE-SC0011999] Funding Source: U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)
- European Research Council (ERC) [338264] Funding Source: European Research Council (ERC)
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Growth in terrestrial gross primary production (GPP)-the amount of carbon dioxide that is 'fixed' into organic material through the photosynthesis of land plants-may provide a negative feedback for climate change(1,2). It remains uncertain, however, to what extent biogeochemical processes can suppress global GPP growth(3). As a consequence, modelling estimates of terrestrial carbon storage, and of feedbacks between the carbon cycle and climate, remain poorly constrained(4). Here we present a global, measurement-based estimate of GPP growth during the twentieth century that is based on long-term atmospheric carbonyl sulfide (COS) records, derived from ice-core, firn and ambient air samples(5). We interpret these records using a model that simulates changes in COS concentration according to changes in its sources and sinks-including a large sink that is related to GPP. We find that the observation-based COS record is most consistent with simulations of climate and the carbon cycle that assume large GPP growth during the twentieth century (31% +/- 5% growth; mean +/- 95% confidence interval). Although this COS analysis does not directly constrain models of future GPP growth, it does provide a global-scale benchmark for historical carbon-cycle simulations.
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