Open AccessBiogeophysical Impacts of Land‐Use Change on Climate Extremes in Low‐Emission Scenarios: Results From HAPPI‐Land
Author(s) -
Hirsch Annette L.,
Guillod Benoit P.,
Seneviratne Sonia I.,
Beyerle Urs,
Boysen Lena R.,
Brovkin Victor,
Davin Edouard L.,
Doelman Jonathan C.,
Kim Hyungjun,
Mitchell Daniel M.,
Nitta Tomoko,
Shiogama Hideo,
Sparrow Sarah,
Stehfest Elke,
Vuuren Detlef P.,
Wilson Simon
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
earth's future
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.641
H-Index - 39
ISSN - 2328-4277
DOI - 10.1002/2017ef000744
Subject(s) - climate change , reforestation , environmental science , land use, land use change and forestry , global warming , land use , greenhouse gas , climate model , global change , climate change mitigation , climatology , environmental resource management , agroforestry , ecology , geology , biology
The impacts of land use have been shown to have considerable influence on regional climate. With the recent international commitment to limit global warming to well below 2°C, emission reductions need to be ambitious and could involve major land‐use change (LUC). Land‐based mitigation efforts to curb emissions growth include increasing terrestrial carbon sequestration through reforestation, or the adoption of bioenergy crops. These activities influence local climate through biogeophysical feedbacks, however, it is uncertain how important they are for a 1.5° climate target. This was the motivation for HAPPI‐Land: the half a degree additional warming, prognosis, and projected impacts—land‐use scenario experiment. Using four Earth system models, we present the first multimodel results from HAPPI‐Land and demonstrate the critical role of land use for understanding the characteristics of regional climate extremes in low‐emission scenarios. In particular, our results show that changes in temperature extremes due to LUC are comparable in magnitude to changes arising from half a degree of global warming. We also demonstrate that LUC contributes to more than 20% of the change in temperature extremes for large land areas concentrated over the Northern Hemisphere. However, we also identify sources of uncertainty that influence the multimodel consensus of our results including how LUC is implemented and the corresponding biogeophysical feedbacks that perturb climate. Therefore, our results highlight the urgent need to resolve the challenges in implementing LUC across models to quantify the impacts and consider how LUC contributes to regional changes in extremes associated with sustainable development pathways.