Process-oriented analysis of dominant sources of uncertainty in the land carbon sink

Abstract

The observed global net land carbon sink is captured by current land models. All models agree that atmospheric CO₂ and nitrogen deposition driven gains in carbon stocks are partially offset by climate and land-use and land-cover change (LULCC) losses. However, there is a lack of consensus in the partitioning of the sink between vegetation and soil, where models do not even agree on the direction of change in carbon stocks over the past 60 years. This uncertainty is driven by plant productivity, allocation, and turnover response to atmospheric CO₂ (and to a smaller extent to LULCC), and the response of soil to LULCC (and to a lesser extent climate). Overall, differences in turnover explain ~70% of model spread in both vegetation and soil carbon changes. Further analysis of internal plant and soil (individual pools) cycling is needed to reduce uncertainty in the controlling processes behind the global land carbon sink.

The global net land sink is relatively well constrained. However, the responsible drivers and above/below-ground partitioning are highly uncertain. Model issues regarding turnover of individual plant and soil components are responsible.