Reviews and syntheses: Field data to benchmark the carbon cycle models for tropical forests
For more accurate projections of both the global carbon (C) cycle and the changing climate, a critical current need is to improve the representation of tropical forests in Earth system models. Tropical forests exchange more C, energy, and water with the atmosphere than any other class of land ec...
| Main Authors: | , , , , , , , |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Copernicus Publications
2017-10-01
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| Series: | Biogeosciences |
| Online Access: | https://www.biogeosciences.net/14/4663/2017/bg-14-4663-2017.pdf |
| Summary: | For more accurate projections of both the global carbon (C) cycle and the
changing climate, a critical current need is to improve the representation of
tropical forests in Earth system models. Tropical forests exchange more C,
energy, and water with the atmosphere than any other class of land
ecosystems. Further, tropical-forest C cycling is likely responding to
the rapid global warming, intensifying water stress, and increasing
atmospheric CO<sub>2</sub> levels. Projections of the future C balance
of the tropics vary widely among global models. A current effort of the
modeling community, the ILAMB (International Land Model Benchmarking) project, is to compile robust observations that can be used to improve the
accuracy and realism of the land models for all major biomes. Our goal with
this paper is to identify field observations of tropical-forest ecosystem
C stocks and fluxes, and of their long-term trends and
climatic and CO<sub>2</sub> sensitivities, that can serve this effort. We propose
criteria for reference-level field data from this biome and present a set of
documented examples from old-growth lowland tropical forests. We offer these
as a starting point towards the goal of a regularly updated consensus set of
benchmark field observations of C cycling in tropical forests. |
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| ISSN: | 1726-4170 1726-4189 |