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Uncertainties in climate responses to past land cover change: First results from the LUCID intercomparison study
Author(s) -
Pitman A. J.,
de NobletDucoudré N.,
Cruz F. T.,
Davin E. L.,
Bonan G. B.,
Brovkin V.,
Claussen M.,
Delire C.,
Ganzeveld L.,
Gayler V.,
van den Hurk B. J. J. M.,
Lawrence P. J.,
van der Molen M. K.,
Müller C.,
Reick C. H.,
Seneviratne S. I.,
Strengers B. J.,
Voldoire A.
Publication year - 2009
Publication title -
geophysical research letters
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.007
H-Index - 273
eISSN - 1944-8007
pISSN - 0094-8276
DOI - 10.1029/2009gl039076
Subject(s) - evapotranspiration , environmental science , land cover , climatology , albedo (alchemy) , climate change , northern hemisphere , precipitation , climate model , atmospheric sciences , meteorology , land use , geography , ecology , art , performance art , biology , art history , geology
Seven climate models were used to explore the biogeophysical impacts of human‐induced land cover change (LCC) at regional and global scales. The imposed LCC led to statistically significant decreases in the northern hemisphere summer latent heat flux in three models, and increases in three models. Five models simulated statistically significant cooling in summer in near‐surface temperature over regions of LCC and one simulated warming. There were few significant changes in precipitation. Our results show no common remote impacts of LCC. The lack of consistency among the seven models was due to: 1) the implementation of LCC despite agreed maps of agricultural land, 2) the representation of crop phenology, 3) the parameterisation of albedo, and 4) the representation of evapotranspiration for different land cover types. This study highlights a dilemma: LCC is regionally significant, but it is not feasible to impose a common LCC across multiple models for the next IPCC assessment.