Climate Extreme Versus Carbon Extreme: Responses of Terrestrial Carbon Fluxes to Temperature and Precipitation

2020

International audience; Carbon fluxes at the land-atmosphere interface are strongly influenced by weather and climate conditions. Yet what is usually known as “climate extremes” does not always translate into very high or low carbon fluxes or so-called “carbon extremes.” To reveal the patterns of how climate extremes influence terrestrial carbon fluxes, we analyzed the interannual variations in ecosystem carbon fluxes simulated by the Terrestrial Biosphere Models (TBMs) in the Inter-Sectoral Impact Model Intercomparison Project. At the global level, TBMs simulated reduced ecosystem net primary productivity (NPP; 18.5 ± 9.3 g C m−2 yr−1), but enhanced heterotrophic respiration (Rh; 7 ± 4.6 g…