Contribution of increasing CO2 and climate to carbon storage by ecosystems in the United States

David Schimel, Jerry Melillo, Hanqin Tian, A. David McGuire, David Kicklighter, Timothy Kittel, Nan Rosenbloom, Steven Running, Peter Thornton, Dennis Ojima, William Parton, Robin Kelly, Martin Sykes, Ron Neilson, Brian Rizzo

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

519 Scopus citations

Abstract

The effects of increasing carbon dioxide (CO2) and climate on net carbon storage in terrestrial ecosystems of the conterminous United States for the period 1895-1993 were modeled with new, detailed historical climate information. For the period 1980-1993, results from an ensemble of three models agree within 25%, simulating a land carbon sink from CO2 and climate effects of 0.08 gigaton of carbon per year. The best estimates of the total sink from inventory data are about three times larger, suggesting that processes such as regrowth on abandoned agricultural land or in forests harvested before 1980 have effects as large as or larger than the direct effects of CO2 and climate. The modeled sink varies by about 100% from year to year as a result of climate variability.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)2004-2006
Number of pages3
JournalScience
Volume287
Issue number5460
DOIs
StatePublished - Mar 17 2000
Externally publishedYes

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Contribution of increasing CO2 and climate to carbon storage by ecosystems in the United States'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this