Modelling northern peatland area and carbon dynamics since the Holocene with the ORCHIDEE-PEAT land surface model (SVN r5488)

Qiu, Chunjing; Zhu, Dan; Ciais, Philippe; Guenet, Bertrand; Peng, Shushi; Krinner, Gerhard; Tootchi, Ardalan; Ducharne, Agnès; Hastie, Adam

doi:10.5194/gmd-12-2961-2019

Cited by 32 publications

(70 citation statements)

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“…This cycle of full LSM, archived output and CPU efficient emulator was repeated six times to reach a carbon and area of peat that defines the pre‐industrial conditions of our simulations. Spin‐up2: The full ORCHIDEE‐PEAT v.2.0 model is run for 100 years with atmospheric CO 2 concentration fixed at 286 ppm and repeated 1901–1920 IPSL‐CM5A‐LR and GFDL‐ESM2M climate forcing, to allow the soil hydrological and thermal conditions to adjust to pre‐industrial climate conditions. Transient historical: A transient historical simulation from 1861 to 2005 forced by historical atmospheric CO 2 concentration, and historical bias‐corrected climate fields from IPSL‐CM5A‐LR and GFDL‐ESM2M, respectively. Future: Forced by CO 2 from each RCP and climate change from IPSL‐CM5A‐LR and GFDL‐ESM2M. The protocol steps 1–3 succeed in producing a reasonable representation of present‐day peatland area and C stocks (Qiu et al, 2019). …”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Based on the process-based land surface model ORCHIDEE-MICT (Guimberteau et al, 2018), the branch ORCHIDEE-PEAT was developed explicitly to represent peatland-specific hydrological, carbon and area dynamics. ORCHIDEE-PEAT has been tested at both local and regional levels, and a detailed description was provided by Qiu et al (2018Qiu et al ( , 2019. Here, we give only a brief outline of the model.…”

Section: Model Descriptionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The role of northern peatlands in the global carbon cycle for the 21st century

Qiu

Zhu

Ciais

et al. 2020

Global Ecol Biogeogr

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Aim Persistent sinks of atmospheric CO2 in undisturbed peatlands are not included in future projections of the global carbon budget. We aimed to explore possible responses of northern peatlands to future climate change and to quantify the role of northern peatlands in the carbon balance of the Northern Hemisphere. Location The terrestrial Northern Hemisphere (>30° N). Time period 1861–2099. Major taxa studied Not a specific plant species, but a plant functional type is used by the model to represent an average of all vegetation growing in northern peatlands. Methods The ORCHIDEE‐PEAT v.2.0 process‐based land surface model was used to simulate area and carbon dynamics of northern peatlands. The model was driven up to the year 2099 by the global CO2 concentration from representative concentration pathways (RCPs) 2.6, 6.0 and 8.5 by corresponding climate projections from two general circulation models after bias correction. Results First, from 1861 to 2005 the mean annual carbon balance of northern peatlands was an atmospheric CO2 sink of 0.10 PgC/year, and this sink will roughly double in the future under both RCP2.6 and RCP6.0, whereas the total northern peatlands will be either a source of CO2 (IPSL‐CM5A‐LR) or near neutral (GFDL‐ESM2M) by the end of the century under RCP8.5. Second, the peatlands in western Canada, western and northern Europe may experience reducing areas and may shift from being CO2 sinks to sources, especially under rapid climate warming. Third, peatland enhances soil carbon accumulation in the Northern Hemisphere (lands north of 30° N). Main conclusions In this study, future changes in both northern peatland extent and peatland carbon storage are simulated. We highlight that undisturbed northern peatlands are small but persistent carbon sinks in the future; thus, it is important to protect these ecosystems.

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Model Descriptionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The role of northern peatlands in the global carbon cycle for the 21st century

Qiu

Zhu

Ciais

et al. 2020

Global Ecol Biogeogr

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“…A number of models have performed large area simulations to account for regional peatland carbon dynamics (e.g. Alexandrov et al, 2016; Kleinen et al, 2012; Qiu et al, 2019; Schuldt, Brovkin, Kleinen, & Winderlich, 2013; Stocker et al, 2014; see supplementary table S1 and para 2, p. 2571 in Chaudhary et al, 2017a for more details).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Modelling past and future peatland carbon dynamics across the pan‐Arctic

Chaudhary

Westermann

Lamba

et al. 2020

Global Change Biology

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The majority of northern peatlands were initiated during the Holocene. Owing to their mass imbalance, they have sequestered huge amounts of carbon in terrestrial ecosystems. Although recent syntheses have filled some knowledge gaps, the extent and remoteness of many peatlands pose challenges to developing reliable regional carbon accumulation estimates from observations. In this work, we employed an individual‐ and patch‐based dynamic global vegetation model (LPJ‐GUESS) with peatland and permafrost functionality to quantify long‐term carbon accumulation rates in northern peatlands and to assess the effects of historical and projected future climate change on peatland carbon balance. We combined published datasets of peat basal age to form an up‐to‐date peat inception surface for the pan‐Arctic region which we then used to constrain the model. We divided our analysis into two parts, with a focus both on the carbon accumulation changes detected within the observed peatland boundary and at pan‐Arctic scale under two contrasting warming scenarios (representative concentration pathway—RCP8.5 and RCP2.6). We found that peatlands continue to act as carbon sinks under both warming scenarios, but their sink capacity will be substantially reduced under the high‐warming (RCP8.5) scenario after 2050. Areas where peat production was initially hampered by permafrost and low productivity were found to accumulate more carbon because of the initial warming and moisture‐rich environment due to permafrost thaw, higher precipitation and elevated CO2 levels. On the other hand, we project that areas which will experience reduced precipitation rates and those without permafrost will lose more carbon in the near future, particularly peatlands located in the European region and between 45 and 55°N latitude. Overall, we found that rapid global warming could reduce the carbon sink capacity of the northern peatlands in the coming decades.

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“…The standalone versions of LSM's are generally more advanced than the ESM versions, due to the additional technical work required for coupling to the atmosphere. In offline mode, more LSM's account for these key processes, and other major factors such as the impact of organic matter on soil thermal and hydraulic properties (Lawrence et al, 2012;Chadburn et al, 2015;Kleinen and Brovkin, 2018;Qiu et al, 2019).…”

Section: Land Surface Models (Lsms)mentioning

confidence: 99%

Consequences of permafrost degradation for Arctic infrastructure – bridging the model gap between regional and engineering scales

Deimling¹,

Lee²,

Ingeman‐Nielsen³

et al. 2020

Preprint

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Abstract. Infrastructure built on perennially frozen ice-rich ground relies heavily on thermally stable subsurface conditions. Climate warming-induced deepening of ground thaw puts such infrastructure at risk of failure. For better assessing the risk of large-scale future damage to Arctic infrastructure, improved strategies for model-based approaches are urgently needed. We used the laterally-coupled one-dimensional heat conduction model CryoGrid3 to simulate permafrost degradation affected by linear infrastructure. We present a case study of a gravel road built on continuous permafrost (Dalton highway, Alaska) and forced our model under historical and strong future warming conditions (following the RCP8.5 scenario). As expected, the presence of a gravel road in the model leads to higher net heat flux entering the ground compared to a reference run without infrastructure, and thus a higher rate of thaw. Further, our results suggest that road failure is likely a consequence of lateral destabilization due to talik formation in the ground beside the road, rather than a direct consequence of a top-down thawing and deepening of the active layer below the road centre. In line with previous studies, we identify enhanced snow accumulation and ponding (both a consequence of infrastructure presence) as key factors for increased soil temperatures and road degradation. Using differing horizontal model resolutions we show that it is possible to capture these key factors and their impact on thawing dynamics with a low number of lateral model units, underlining the potential of our model approach for use in pan-arctic risk assessments. Our results suggest a general two-phase behaviour of permafrost degradation: an initial phase of slow and gradual thaw, followed by a strong increase in thawing rates after exceedance of a critical ground warming. The timing of this transition and the magnitude of thaw rate acceleration differ strongly between undisturbed tundra and infrastructure-affected permafrost ground. Our model results suggest that current model-based approaches which do not explicitly take into account infrastructure in their designs are likely to strongly underestimate the timing of future Arctic infrastructure failure. By using a laterally-coupled one-dimensional model to simulate linear infrastructure, we infer results in line with outcomes from more complex 2D- and 3D-models, but our model's computational efficiency allows us to account for long-term climate change impacts on infrastructure from permafrost degradation. Our model simulations underline that it is crucial to consider climate warming when planning and constructing infrastructure on permafrost as a transition from a stable to a highly unstable state can well occur within the service life time (about 30 years) of such a construction. Such a transition can even be triggered in the coming decade by climate change for infrastructure built on high northern latitude continuous permafrost that displays cold and relatively stable conditions today.

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Modelling northern peatland area and carbon dynamics since the Holocene with the ORCHIDEE-PEAT land surface model (SVN r5488)

Cited by 32 publications

References 100 publications

The role of northern peatlands in the global carbon cycle for the 21st century

The role of northern peatlands in the global carbon cycle for the 21st century

Modelling past and future peatland carbon dynamics across the pan‐Arctic

Consequences of permafrost degradation for Arctic infrastructure – bridging the model gap between regional and engineering scales

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