Please note that this session was withdrawn and is no longer available in the respective programme. This withdrawal might have been the result of a merge with another session.
CL1.21
Biosphere - Atmosphere Interactions : How can we properly evaluate the role of land-use induced land-cover changes in the climate system? (co-sponsored by iLEAPS)
Convener:
Nathalie de Noblet |
Co-Conveners:
Andy Pitman ,
Gordon Bonan
Recent coordinated simulations, carried out within the LUCID (Land-Use and Climate: Identification of robust impacts) project, have shown that agreement between the models' responses to similar land-use induced land-cover changes (LULCC) is hard to obtain (Pitman et al. 2009). Part of the dispersion can be attributed to the way land-surface models represent the anthropogenic land (crop, pasture, ...). Because such vegetation changes are known to have a large regional impact and potentially a global one, there are a number of unanswered questions that still need to be worked on (addressed):
* How well do the land-surface models simulate the contrasts between natural and anthropogenic land (evaluation of the land models that are embedded within the climate models)?
* What are the respective sign and magnitude of biogeophysical and biogeochemical feedbacks resulting from LULCC?
* How accurate are our global maps of historical vegetation? How well can we predict future LULCC ?
* How well do the models agree in simulating the climatic impacts of LULCC (address both past and future changes with atmosphere-land and atmosphere-land-ocean climate models)?