4.5 Article

Insensitivity of Ecosystem Productivity to Predicted Changes in Fine-Scale Rainfall Variability

期刊

出版社

AMER GEOPHYSICAL UNION
DOI: 10.1029/2021JG006735

关键词

climate change; carbon cycle; rainfall; rainfall extremes; ecosystem models; water cycle

资金

  1. Skempton Fellowship of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Imperial College London
  2. NERC [NE/S003495/1]
  3. Singapore Ministry of Education Academic Research Fund Tier 1

向作者/读者索取更多资源

Climate change-induced changes in rainfall will mainly affect ecosystem responses at dry sites, while wet sites are less sensitive to rainfall changes. Sites with intermediate wetness may face reductions in productivity. Increases in rainfall will impact ecosystems, but changes in the fine-scale temporal structure of rainfall have an insignificant effect on ecosystem productivity.
Changes in rainfall associated with climate change are expected to affect the tightly coupled water-carbon ecosystem dynamics. Here, we study the effects of altered rainfall at 33 sites in North America, as projected by the high-resolution/high-fidelity (similar to 4 km, 1 hr) continental-wide Weather Research Forecasting (WRF) convection-permitting model under a high-emission scenario (RCP 8.5). We make use of a stochastic weather generator to extend WRF outputs, accounting for natural variability and simultaneously separate the changes in total rainfall, its seasonality, and its intraseasonal pattern. We used these rainfall scenarios to study ecosystem responses with the state-of-the-art Tethys-Chloris terrestrial biosphere model. Model simulations suggest that increases in mean annual rainfall dominate ecosystem responses at dry sites, while wet sites are less sensitive to rainfall changes. Sites of intermediate wetness face reductions in productivity, due to reduced growing season rainfall and increased water losses under altered seasonality, which outpace any possible benefits induced by increases in mean annual totals. Changes in the fine-scale temporal structure of rainfall have an insignificant impact on ecosystem productivity and only alter hydrological dynamics, contradicting expectations based on some field experiments, which, however, are not tailored to directly quantify climate change impacts, but rather to understand the mechanisms leading to ecosystem responses. We further demonstrate how approaches following the fewer but larger rainfall events concept might exacerbate ecosystem responses.

作者

我是这篇论文的作者
点击您的名字以认领此论文并将其添加到您的个人资料中。

评论

主要评分

4.5
评分不足

次要评分

新颖性
-
重要性
-
科学严谨性
-
评价这篇论文

推荐

暂无数据
暂无数据