Tropical nighttime warming as a dominant driver of variability in the terrestrial carbon sink.

ABSTRACT: The terrestrial biosphere is currently a strong carbon (C) sink but may switch to a source in the 21st century as climate-driven losses exceed CO2-driven C gains, thereby accelerating global warming. Although it has long been recognized that tropical climate plays a critical role in regulating interannual climate variability, the causal link between changes in temperature and precipitation and terrestrial processes remains uncertain. Here, we combine atmospheric mass balance, remote sensing-modeled datasets of vegetation C uptake, and climate datasets to characterize the temporal variability of the terrestrial C sink and determine the dominant climate drivers of this variability. We show that the interannual variability of global land C sink has grown by 50-100% over the past 50 y. We furt

SUBMITTER: Anderegg WR 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4697419 | biostudies-literature | 2015 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature