HR: 1340h
AN: H53D-1453    [Abstracts]
TI: Sensitivity of Carbon Inventories to Natural Climate Cycles
AU: * Swann, A L
EM: aswann@atmos.berkeley.edu
AF: Dept. of Earth & Planetary Science, University of California, Berkeley 307 McCone Hall #4767, Berkeley, CA 94720-4767, United States
AU: Fung, I Y
EM: inez@atmos.berkeley.edu
AF: Dept. of Earth & Planetary Science, University of California, Berkeley 307 McCone Hall #4767, Berkeley, CA 94720-4767, United States
AB: Terrestrial carbon inventories and fluxes carry memories of climate variations and other perturbations for time scales of seasons to centuries. We have developed a simple multi-box model of the terrestrial carbon cycle forced by cyclic climate perturbations on net primary production (NPP) and residence times for each carbon pool. The model is used to explore the variability of carbon fluxes under "natural" conditions which serve as background variability to any changes induced by global warming. Preliminary model results suggest that a lower biospheric carbon inventory for an oscillatory climate (as in a drought/pluvial cycle) than for a constant climate. No secular trend in productivity is necessary to cause this loss, and the effect (increased atmospheric CO₂) could create a positive feedback by leading to further drought/pluvial cycles (e.g. increased hydrologic cycle intensity associated with global warming). We will present results from sensitivity calculations that explore the spectrum of carbon inventory variations for different climatic periodicities.
DE: 0428 Carbon cycling (4806)
DE: 1615 Biogeochemical cycles, processes, and modeling (0412, 0414, 0793, 4805, 4912)
DE: 1616 Climate variability (1635, 3305, 3309, 4215, 4513)
DE: 1847 Modeling
DE: 3305 Climate change and variability (1616, 1635, 3309, 4215, 4513)
SC: Hydrology [H]
MN: 2007 Fall Meeting