Model sensitivities and carbon cycle - climate feedbacks: a study with an Earth System Model

Poster (2009, November)

Biogeochemical changes in the North Pacific in response to a shut down of the Atlantic meridional overturning

Conference (2009, May)

Assessment of modelling uncertainties in long-term climate and sea level change projections "Aster"

Report (2009)

The role of ocean transport in the uptake of anthropogenic CO2

in Biogeosciences (2009), 6(3), 375-390

We compare modeled oceanic carbon uptake in response to pulse CO2 emissions using a suite of global ocean models and Earth system models. In response to a CO2 pulse emission of 590 Pg C (corresponding to ... [more ▼]

We compare modeled oceanic carbon uptake in response to pulse CO2 emissions using a suite of global ocean models and Earth system models. In response to a CO2 pulse emission of 590 Pg C (corresponding to an instantaneous doubling of atmospheric CO2 from 278 to 556 ppm), the fraction of CO2 emitted that is absorbed by the ocean is: 37 +/- 8\%, 56 +/- 10\%, and 81 +/- 4 (model mean +/- 2 sigma) in year 30, 100, and 1000 after the emission pulse, respectively. Modeled oceanic uptake of pulse CO2 on timescales from decades to about a century is strongly correlated with simulated present-day uptake of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) and CO2 across all models, while the amount of pulse CO2 absorbed by the ocean from a century to a millennium is strongly correlated with modeled radiocarbon in the deep Southern and Pacific Ocean. However, restricting the analysis to models that are capable of reproducing observations within uncertainty, the correlation is generally much weaker. The rates of surface-to-deep ocean transport are determined for individual models from the instantaneous doubling CO2 simulations, and they are used to calculate oceanic CO2 uptake in response to pulse CO2 emissions of different sizes pulses of 1000 and 5000 Pg C. These results are compared with simulated oceanic uptake of CO2 by a number of models simulations with the coupling of climate-ocean carbon cycle and without it. This comparison demonstrates that the impact of different ocean transport rates across models on oceanic uptake of anthropogenic CO2 is of similar magnitude as that of climate-carbon cycle feed-backs in a single model, emphasizing the important role of ocean transport in the uptake of anthropogenic CO2. [less ▲]

Ocean biogeochemical cycles and climate sensitivity in an Earth system model

Conference (2008, October)

Oxygen, a tool for assessing ocean tracer transport models

Poster (2008, April)

Long-term climate commitments projected with climate-carbon cycle models

in Journal of Climate (2008), 21(12), 2721-2751

Eight earth system models of intermediate complexity (EMICs) are used to project climate change commitments for the recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's (IPCC's) Fourth Assessment Report ... [more ▼]

Eight earth system models of intermediate complexity (EMICs) are used to project climate change commitments for the recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's (IPCC's) Fourth Assessment Report (AR4). Simulations are run until the year 3000 A. D. and extend substantially farther into the future than conceptually similar simulations with atmosphere-ocean general circulation models (AOGCMs) coupled to carbon cycle models. In this paper the following are investigated: 1) the climate change commitment in response to stabilized greenhouse gases and stabilized total radiative forcing, 2) the climate change commitment in response to earlier CO2 emissions, and 3) emission trajectories for profiles leading to the stabilization of atmospheric CO2 and their uncertainties due to carbon cycle processes. Results over the twenty-first century compare reasonably well with results from AOGCMs, and the suite of EMICs proves well suited to complement more complex models. Substantial climate change commitments for sea level rise and global mean surface temperature increase after a stabilization of atmospheric greenhouse gases and radiative forcing in the year 2100 are identified. The additional warming by the year 3000 is 0.6-1.6 K for the low-CO2 IPCC Special Report on Emissions Scenarios (SRES) B1 scenario and 1.3-2.2 K for the high-CO2 SRES A2 scenario. Correspondingly, the post-2100 thermal expansion commitment is 0.3-1.1 m for SRES B1 and 0.5-2.2 m for SRES A2. Sea level continues to rise due to thermal expansion for several centuries after CO2 stabilization. In contrast, surface temperature changes slow down after a century. The meridional overturning circulation is weakened in all EMICs, but recovers to nearly initial values in all but one of the models after centuries for the scenarios considered. Emissions during the twenty-first century continue to impact atmospheric CO2 and climate even at year 3000. All models find that most of the anthropogenic carbon emissions are eventually taken up by the ocean (49%-62%) in year 3000, and that a substantial fraction (15%-28%) is still airborne even 900 yr after carbon emissions have ceased. Future stabilization of atmospheric CO2 and climate change requires a substantial reduction of CO2 emissions below present levels in all EMICs. This reduction needs to be substantially larger if carbon cycle-climate feedbacks are accounted for or if terrestrial CO2 fertilization is not operating. Large differences among EMICs are identified in both the response to increasing atmospheric CO2 and the response to climate change. This highlights the need for improved representations of carbon cycle processes in these models apart from the sensitivity to climate change. Sensitivity simulations with one single EMIC indicate that both carbon cycle and climate sensitivity related uncertainties on projected allowable emissions are substantial. [less ▲]

Meridional reorganizations of marine and terrestrial productivity during Heinrich events,

in Paleoceanography (2008), 23

To study the response of the global carbon cycle to a weakening of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), a series of freshwater perturbation experiments is conducted both under ... [more ▼]

To study the response of the global carbon cycle to a weakening of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), a series of freshwater perturbation experiments is conducted both under preindustrial and glacial conditions using the earth system model of intermediate complexity LOVECLIM. A shutdown of the AMOC leads to substantial cooling of the North Atlantic, a weak warming of the Southern Hemisphere, intensification of the northeasterly trade winds, and a southward shift of the Intertropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ). Trade wind anomalies change upwelling in the tropical oceans and hence marine productivity. Furthermore, hydrological changes associated with a southward displacement of the ITCZ lead to a reduction of terrestrial carbon stocks mainly in northern Africa and northern South America in agreement with paleoproxy data. In the freshwater perturbation experiments the ocean acts as a sink of CO2, primarily through increased solubility. The net atmospheric CO2 anomaly induced by a shutdown of the AMOC amounts to about +15 ppmv and −10 ppmv for preindustrial and glacial conditions, respectively. This background state dependence can be explained by the fact that the glacial climate is drier and the terrestrial vegetation therefore releases a smaller amount of carbon to the atmosphere. This study demonstrates that the net CO2 response to large-scale ocean circulation changes has significant contributions both from the terrestrial and marine carbon cycle. [less ▲]

Modeling the influence of the Greenland ice sheet melting on the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation during the next millennia

Conference (2007, April 19)

A three-dimensional Earth system model of intermediate complexity including a dynamic ice sheet component has been used to investigate the long-term evolution of the Greenland ice sheet and its effects on ... [more ▼]

A three-dimensional Earth system model of intermediate complexity including a dynamic ice sheet component has been used to investigate the long-term evolution of the Greenland ice sheet and its effects on the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC) in response to a range of stabilized anthropogenic forcings. Our results suggest that the Greenland ice sheet volume should experience a significant decrease in the future. For a radiative forcing exceeding 7.5 W m-2, the modeled ice sheet melts away within 3000 years. A number of feedbacks operate during this deglaciation, implying a strong non-linear relationship between the radiative forcing and the melting rate. In the most extreme scenario considered, the freshwater flux from Greenland into the surrounding oceans is higher than 0.1 Sv during a few centuries. This is however insufficient to induce a shutdown of the AMOC in the model. [less ▲]

Modelling the evolution of climate and sea level over the third millennium (MILMO)

Report (2007)

A new three-dimensional Earth system model of intermediate complexity was developed. This model, named LOVECLIM, consists of five major components representing the atmosphere (ECBilt), the ocean and sea ... [more ▼]

A new three-dimensional Earth system model of intermediate complexity was developed. This model, named LOVECLIM, consists of five major components representing the atmosphere (ECBilt), the ocean and sea ice (CLIO), the terrestrial biosphere (VECODE), the oceanic carbon cycle (LOCH) and the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets (AGISM). It also includes a global glacier-melt algorithm which is run in off-line mode. It is worth mentioning that there are very few models of this type worldwide. ECBilt is a quasi-geostrophic atmospheric model with 3 levels and a T21 horizontal resolution. It includes simple parameterisations of the diabatic heating processes and an explicit representation of the hydrological cycle. Cloud cover is prescribed according to present-day climatology. CLIO is a primitive-equation, free-surface ocean general circulation model coupled to a thermodynamic–dynamic sea-ice model. Its horizontal resolution is 3° × 3°, and there are 20 levels in the ocean. VECODE is a reduced-form model of vegetation dynamics and of the terrestrial carbon cycle. It simulates the dynamics of two main terrestrial plant functional types (trees and grassland) at the same resolution as that of ECBilt. LOCH is a comprehensive model of the oceanic carbon cycle that takes into account both the solubility and biological pumps. The version utilised here has the same resolution as the one of CLIO, which greatly facilitates the coupling between both models. Finally, AGISM is composed of a three-dimensional thermomechanical model of the ice sheet flow, a visco-elastic bedrock model and a model of the mass balance at the ice–atmosphere and ice–ocean interfaces. The Antarctic ice-sheet module also contains a model of the ice-shelf dynamics to enable interactions with the ocean and migration of the grounding line. For both ice sheets, calculations are made on a 10 km × 10 km resolution grid with 31 sigma levels. The performance of LOVECLIM was assessed by conducting ensemble simulations over the last few centuries. Starting from different initial conditions, the model was integrated from year 1500 AD up to year 2000 AD with solar irradiance, volcanic activity, tropospheric ozone amount, greenhouse-gas (including CO2) concentrations and sulphate-aerosol load evolving with time according to reconstructions. Over the last 140 years, the model simulates a global surface warming ranging from 0.33°C to 0.43°C, with a mean value of 0.38°C. This value is about 0.15°C lower than the observed one. A detailed analysis of the results has revealed the model behaves reasonably well at mid- and high latitudes. By contrast, at low latitudes, the agreement between the model results and observational estimates is less good, especially in the Southern Hemisphere. In those regions, LOVECLIM significantly underestimates the warming and the climate variability observed during the last few decades. The coarse resolution of the model and the simplified representation of the atmospheric dynamical and physical processes seem to be the two major candidates responsible for this deficiency. Regarding the Greenland ice sheet, we found a slightly increasing ice volume during the period 1700–2000 AD. This trend is largely explained as a residual response to the late Holocene forcing, in particular to the Little Ice Age cooling after year 1500 AD. The effect is not particularly large, however, amounting to only 1.2 cm of global sea-level rise over the entire period. The growing trend stabilizes during the 20th century, with almost no net effect on ice volume. Only during the last decades of the 20th century, the ice volume begins to decrease in response to the imposed warming. We also found the Antarctic ice sheet to be retreating slowly at a rate equivalent to a global sea-level rise of about 1.7 cm during the 20th century. This evolution is mostly due to a long-term background trend of +2.6 cm, mitigated by about 0.9 cm from slightly rising accumulation rates over the same period. The ongoing dominance of past climatic changes on the contemporary ice-sheet evolution is a fine illustration of the inertia encountered when studying the response of large continental ice sheets. In this case, it mainly results from an ongoing grounding-line retreat in West Antarctica following rising sea levels since the Last Glacial Maximum. As far as mountain glaciers and small ice caps are concerned, their area and volume are found to reach a maximum in the late 19th century corresponding to the Little Ice Age, but this maximum and the ensuing 20th century glacier retreat are not very pronounced. Over the last hundred years, the model simulates an ice loss equivalent to only 0.89 cm of sea-level rise. This value is at the lower end compared to other assessments. One reason is the low total ice volume assumed by the global glacier-melt algorithm (about 20 cm of total sea-level rise, a factor 2.5 less than previous estimates). A second reason is the prescribed global ice mass balance for the 1961–1990 reference period, which is also at the lower end of other simulations. For the 20th century, LOVECLIM explains about 7.6 cm of sea-level rise. The bulk of that value, about 4.7 cm, comes from thermal expansion of the World Ocean. The Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets combined lead to a sea-level rise of 2 cm, and glaciers and ice caps are responsible for about 0.9 cm of sea-level rise. These numbers are similar to those that have been derived for the IPCC Third Assessment Report (TAR) for the same components except for the lower glacier contribution as found here. Over the industrial era, the net uptake of carbon by the ocean simulated by LOVECLIM is within the range of current estimates, although at the lower end of this range. It should be noted that a detailed evaluation of the performance of the terrestrial carbon-cycle module was impossible to perform given the very wide range of available data. Experiments with interactive atmospheric CO2 concentration were also carried out with LOVECLIM forced by CO2 emissions from fossil fuel burning and land-use change. Interestingly enough, the atmospheric CO2 level computed by the model in year 2000 AD compares relatively well with the observed one. A series of climate-change projections were then conducted over the 21st century. In these experiments, LOVECLIM was driven by changes in greenhouse-gas (including CO2), tropospheric ozone and sulphate-aerosol concentrations following the IPCC SRES scenarios B1, A1B and A2. In year 2100 AD, the model predicts a globally averaged, annual mean surface warming of 1°C, 1.4°C and 1.8°C for scenarios B1, A1B and A2, respectively, and an associated increase in precipitation of 3.6%, 5.1% and 6.6%, respectively. In agreement with studies performed with climate general circulation models (CGCMs), a weakening of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (MOC) is noticed in all runs. At the end of the 21st century, the decrease in the maximum value of the annual mean meridional overturning streamfunction below the surface layer in the Atlantic basin, which is an index of the MOC intensity, reaches 19% for scenario B1, 21% for scenario A1B and 27% for scenario A2. In our model, as in the majority of CGCMs, this decrease is caused more by changes in surface heat flux than by changes in surface freshwater flux. Under the forcing scenario A1B, LOVECLIM simulates a global sea-level rise of 31.3 cm in year 2100 AD. As for the 20th century, the most important contributor is the oceanic thermal expansion (+18.8 cm), followed by the contributions from the Greenland ice sheet (+5.2 cm), glaciers and ice caps (+3.8 cm) and the Antarctic ice sheet (+3.5 cm). The total rise is equivalent to a quadrupling of the sea-level rise simulated for the 20th century. Our sea-level value is somewhat lower than the central estimate for the same four components of about 40 cm in the IPCC TAR predictions. This can be explained by the low climate sensitivity of LOVECLIM, and hence the lower global temperature rise, which mostly affects the largest contribution of thermal expansion of the World Ocean. Another difference with the IPCC TAR predictions is the positive contribution from Antarctica of several cm of sea-level rise. That is in contrast to most other simulations showing a growing ice sheet and a negative contribution to global sea level of typically between -5 and -20 cm. The IPCC TAR also found a generally larger contribution from mountain glaciers and small ice caps. Our glacier-volume loss is smaller because of the lower initial glacier volume assumed by the glacier-melt algorithm. The total projected sea-level rise for the 21st century is only slightly affected by the scenario itself. For the range of SRES scenarios used by LOVECLIM, the total sea-level rise is found to vary between +22 and +35 cm by year 2100 AD. The much larger range of between +9 and +88 cm obtained for the IPCC TAR arose mainly from the inclusion of model uncertainties, and not from the greenhouse-gas-forcing scenarios employed. As expected, climate change impacts the air–sea CO2 exchange in the model by lowering the solubility and hence the net uptake of carbon by the ocean. The effect is however rather modest at the century time-scale given the moderate increase in sea-surface temperature simulated by LOVECLIM. In addition, we do not observe any significant change in the oceanic biology at the global scale during the 21st century. The picture is a bit different regarding the terrestrial biosphere. Both the climate and fertilization effects strongly increase the carbon uptake in VECODE. A number of experiments with interactive atmospheric CO2 concentration were also carried out over the 21st century. Contrary to other modelling studies, LOVECLIM predicts lower atmospheric CO2 levels at the end of the 21st century when the effect of climate change on the carbon cycle is accounted for in the model. The warming enhances the net uptake of carbon by the terrestrial biosphere which more than offsets the reduction in oceanic uptake resulting from the solubility decrease. Finally, we have thoroughly analysed the model response to a range of stabilized anthropogenic forcings over the next millennia. For the variety of forcing scenarios considered, LOVECLIM simulates a globally averaged, annual mean surface warming ranging between 0.55°C and 3.75°C and an associated decrease in Arctic and Antarctic sea-ice extent. However, no simulation predicts an entirely ice-free Arctic Ocean during summertime at the millennium time-scale. In the most pessimistic case, a small ice pack of about 0.5×106 km2 persists. Our results also suggest that it is very likely that the volume of the Greenland ice sheet will largely decrease in the future. After 1000 years of model integration, the ice volume is reduced by more than 20% when the radiative forcing is higher than 6.5 W m-2. Moreover, for a radiative forcing greater than 7.5 W m-2, the ice sheet melts away in less than 3000 years. Note that the ice-sheet disintegration might be even more rapid if processes responsible for the widespread glacier acceleration currently observed in Greenland were taken into consideration in the model. We also found that the freshwater flux from the melting Greenland ice sheet into the neighbouring oceans, which peaks in the most extreme scenario tested at 0.11 Sv (1 Sv = 10^6 m3 s-1) and remains above 0.1 Sv during three centuries, is not large enough to trigger a shutdown of the Atlantic MOC in our model, in contrast to some other models. Those models are however more responsive to freshwater perturbations than ours. Besides, we showed that climate feedbacks play a crucial role in the ice-sheet evolution and that the Greenland deglaciation considerably enhances the greenhouse-gas-induced warming over Greenland and the central Arctic. This stresses the importance of incorporating the two-way interactions between the Greenland ice sheet and climate in climate- and sea-level-change projections at the millennial time-scale. For the Antarctic ice sheet, the response is much less drastic than for the Greenland ice sheet. For instance, after 3000 years of 4×CO2 forcing (∼7.7 W m-2), the Antarctic grounded ice volume and area are reduced in our model by only 8% and 4%, respectively. For a sustained radiative forcing of 8.5 W m-2 (the highest forcing scenario considered in our study), LOVECLIM predicts a global sea-level rise of 7.15 m by year 3000 AD. Most of it is due to melting of the Greenland ice sheet (+4.25 m), followed by melting of the Antarctic ice sheet (+1.42 m), thermal expansion (+1.29 m) and the contribution from mountain glaciers and small ice caps (+0.19 m). Our results show that it will be very difficult to limit the eventual sea-level rise to less than 1 m after 1000 years, unless the atmospheric CO2 concentration can be stabilized to less than twice its pre-industrial level. Such a goal can only be reached by emission reductions far larger than any policy currently pursued. Concerning the carbon cycle, the experiments carried out with LOVECLIM highlight the opposite responses of the terrestrial and oceanic carbon reservoirs to climate change. We also found that, when anthropogenic CO2 emissions cease, the terrestrial biosphere becomes a weak carbon source, while the ocean continues to be a sink. It should be mentioned that no dramatic change in the global marine productivity is observed in our simulations. This arises from the fact that the modifications of the oceanic properties that affect this productivity (stratification, meridional overturning, …) are rather moderate. The effects of climate change are however not negligible. In particular, the decrease in sea-ice extent predicted by the model results in a longer growing season and a larger nutrient uptake (especially silica) in polar regions. As a result, by the end of the 23rd century, silica concentrations in the upper 100 m of the Southern Ocean drop by as much of 30% for the most extreme forcing scenarios. [less ▲]