Projected soil carbon loss with warming in constrained Earth system models.

ABSTRACT: The soil carbon-climate feedback is currently the least constrained component of global warming projections, and the major source of uncertainties stems from a poor understanding of soil carbon turnover processes. Here, we assemble data from long-term temperature-controlled soil incubation studies to show that the arctic and boreal region has the shortest intrinsic soil carbon turnover time while tropical forests have the longest one, and current Earth system models overestimate intrinsic turnover time by 30 percent across active, slow and passive carbon pools. Our constraint suggests that the global soils will switch from carbon sink to source, with a loss of 0.22-0.53 petagrams of carbon per year until the end of this century from strong mitigation to worst emission scenarios, suggesting

SUBMITTER: Ren S 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10761705 | biostudies-literature | 2024 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature