Climate simulation of the twenty-first century with interactive land-use changes

To include land-use dynamics in a general circulation model (GCM), the physical system has to be linked to a system that represents socio-economy. This issue is addressed by coupling an integrated assessment model, IMAGE2.2, to an ocean–atmosphere GCM, CNRM-CM3. In the new system, IMAGE2.2 provides CNRM-CM3 with all the external forcings that are scenario dependent: greenhouse gas (GHGs) concentrations, sulfate aerosols charge and land cover. Conversely, the GCM gives IMAGE changes in mean temperature and precipitation. With this new system, we have run an adapted scenario of the IPCC SRES scenario family. We have chosen a single scenario with maximum land-use changes (SRES A2), to illustrate some important feedback issues. Even in this two-way coupled model set-up, land use in this scenario is mainly driven by demographic and agricultural practices, which overpowers a potential influence of climate feedbacks on land-use patterns. This suggests that for scenarios in which socio-economically driven land-use change is very large, land-use changes can be incorporated in GCM simulations as a one-way driving force, without taking into account climate feedbacks. The dynamics of natural vegetation is more closely linked to climate but the time-scale of changes is of the order of a century. Thus, the coupling between natural vegetation and climate could generate important feedbacks but these effects are relevant mainly for multi-centennial simulations.

[1]  J. Alcamo,et al.  Global modelling of environmental change : an overview of IMAGE 2.1 , 1998 .

[2]  Jean Côté,et al.  A Two-Time-Level Semi-Lagrangian Semi-implicit Scheme for Spectral Models , 1988 .

[3]  Nathan P. Gillett,et al.  Natural and anthropogenic climate change: incorporating historical land cover change, vegetation dynamics and the global carbon cycle , 2004 .

[4]  K. Caldeira,et al.  Land use changes and northern hemisphere cooling , 2001 .

[5]  Eric F. Lambin,et al.  The Influence of Land Use Change on Climate in the Sahel , 2002 .

[6]  G. Müller,et al.  The Scientific Basis , 1995 .

[7]  N. Noblet,et al.  Synergistic feedbacks from ocean and vegetation on the African Monsoon response to Mid‐Holocene insolation , 1999 .

[8]  D. Pollard,et al.  Decadal variability of rainfall in the Sahel: results from the coupled GENESIS-IBIS atmosphere-biosphere model , 2004 .

[9]  Rik Leemans,et al.  Defining the importance of including transient ecosystem responses to simulate C‐cycle dynamics in a global change model , 2000 .

[10]  R. Leemans,et al.  Global change scenarios of the 21st Century : results from the IMAGE 2.1 model , 1998 .

[11]  A. Voldoire,et al.  Tropical deforestation and climate variability , 2004 .

[12]  Corinne Le Quéré,et al.  An efficient and accurate representation of complex oceanic and biospheric models of anthropogenic carbon uptake , 1996 .

[13]  R. Betts,et al.  Acceleration of global warming due to carbon-cycle feedbacks in a coupled climate model , 2000, Nature.

[14]  P. Rowntree,et al.  Understanding the Sensitivity of a GCM Simulation of Amazonian Deforestation to the Specification of Vegetation and Soil Characteristics , 1997 .

[15]  A. Voldoire.  Quantifying the impact of future land‐use changes against increases in GHG concentrations , 2006 .

[16]  Jonathan A. Foley,et al.  Long-Term Variability in a Coupled Atmosphere–Biosphere Model , 2004 .

[17]  I. C. Prentice,et al.  An integrated biosphere model of land surface processes , 1996 .

[18]  J. Foley,et al.  Effects of climate variability and disturbances on the Amazonian terrestrial ecosystems dynamics , 2002 .

[19]  I. C. Prentice,et al.  Evaluation of ecosystem dynamics, plant geography and terrestrial carbon cycling in the LPJ dynamic global vegetation model , 2003 .

[20]  A. Pitman,et al.  The relative impact of observed change in land cover and carbon dioxide as simulated by a climate model , 2000 .

[21]  S. Running,et al.  Simulated impacts of historical land cover changes on global climate in northern winter , 2000 .

[22]  W. Lucht,et al.  LPJ - A coupled model of vegetation dynamics and the terrestrial carbon cycle , 2000 .

[23]  A. Pitman,et al.  The regional scale impact of land cover change simulated with a climate model , 2002 .

[24]  J. Royer,et al.  A statistical cloud scheme for use in an AGCM , 1993 .

[25]  H. Giordani,et al.  The Land Surface Scheme ISBA within the Météo-France Climate Model ARPEGE. Part I. Implementation and Preliminary Results , 1995 .

[26]  Ann Henderson-Sellers,et al.  Tropical deforestation: Modeling local‐ to regional‐scale climate change , 1993 .

[27]  M. Haylock,et al.  Observed coherent changes in climatic extremes during the second half of the twentieth century , 2002 .

[28]  Rik Leemans,et al.  Determining the potential distribution of vegetation, crops and agricultural productivity , 1994 .

[29]  Piers J. Sellers,et al.  Biogeophysical Consequences of a Tropical Deforestation Scenario: A GCM Simulation Study , 1996 .

[30]  M. Willig,et al.  Impacts of extreme weather and climate on terrestrial biota , 2000 .

[31]  P. Bougeault,et al.  A Simple Parameterization of the Large-Scale Effects of Cumulus Convection , 1985 .

[32]  R. DeFries,et al.  Effects of Land Cover Conversion on Surface Climate , 2002 .

[33]  Douglas W. Nychka,et al.  A comparison of a GCM response to historical anthropogenic land cover change and model sensitivity to uncertainty in present-day land cover representations , 2005 .

[34]  Bert de Vries,et al.  GLOBAL CHANGE SCENARIOS OF THE 21st CENTURY , 2007 .

[35]  W. Cramer,et al.  A global biome model based on plant physiology and dominance, soil properties and climate , 1992 .

[36]  R. Lacaze,et al.  A Global Database of Land Surface Parameters at 1-km Resolution in Meteorological and Climate Models , 2003 .

[37]  M. Loutre,et al.  Climate of the last millennium: a sensitivity study , 2002 .

[38]  Daniel Cariolle,et al.  Southern hemisphere medium-scale waves and total ozone disturbances in a spectral general circulation model , 1986 .

[39]  Roselyne Lacaze,et al.  Ecoclimap, a global database of land surface parameters at 1km resolution in meteorological and climate models , 2003 .

[40]  Robert Jacob,et al.  Simulated and Observed Preindustrial to Modern Vegetation and Climate Changes , 2005 .

[41]  Alexei G. Sankovski,et al.  Special report on emissions scenarios , 2000 .

[42]  D. Salas Mélia,et al.  A global coupled sea ice–ocean model , 2002 .

[43]  Alexei G. Sankovski,et al.  Geographical Distributions of Temperature Change for Scenarios of Greenhouse Gas and Sulfur Dioxide Emissions , 2000 .

[44]  J. Houghton,et al.  Climate change 2001 : the scientific basis , 2001 .

[45]  T. Oki,et al.  Design of Total Runoff Integrating Pathways (TRIP)—A Global River Channel Network , 1998 .

[46]  G. Meehl,et al.  The Importance of Land-Cover Change in Simulating Future Climates , 2005, Science.

[47]  J. Morcrette.  Impact of changes to the radiation transfer parameterizations plus cloud optical properties in the ECMWF model , 1990 .

[48]  R. DeFries,et al.  Human modification of the landscape and surface climate in the next fifty years , 2002 .