Jayakrishnan, KU and Bala, G and Cao, L and Caldeira, K (2022) Contrasting climate and carbon-cycle consequences of fossil-fuel use versus deforestation disturbance. In: Environmental Research Letters, 17 (6).
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Abstract
Carbon dioxide emissions from deforestation disturbance (e.g. clear-cutting, forest fires) are in the same units as carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels. However, if the forest is allowed to regrow, there is a large difference between climate effects of that forest disturbance and climate effects of fossil CO2. In this study, using a set of idealized global climate-carbon model simulations with equal amounts of CO2 emissions, we show that on century to millennial timescales the response of the climate system to fossil-fuel burning versus deforestation disturbance are vastly different. We performed two 1000 year simulations where we add abrupt emissions of about 600 PgC to the preindustrial state as a consequence of either fossil fuel use or deforestation disturbance with vegetation regrowth. In the fossil fuel simulations, after 1000 years, about 20 of the initial atmospheric CO2 concentration perturbation remains in the atmosphere and the climate is about 1 °C warmer compared to preindustrial state. In contrast, in the case of deforestation with regrowth, after 1000 years, atmospheric CO2 concentration returns close to preindustrial values, because deforested land will typically recover its carbon over the decades and centuries in the absence of further human intervention. These results highlight the differences in the degree of long-term commitment associated with fossil-fuel versus deforestation emissions. © 2022 The Author(s). Published by IOP Publishing Ltd.
| Item Type: | Journal Article |
|---|---|
| Publication: | Environmental Research Letters |
| Publisher: | Institute of Physics |
| Additional Information: | The copyright for this article belongs to the Authors. |
| Keywords: | Carbon dioxide; Climate models; Deforestation; Fossil fuels; Global warming, Carbon cycles; Carbon dioxide emissions; Climate cycle; Climate effects; CO2 concentration; Forest fires; Fossil fuel emissions; Fuel use; Land use emission; Pre-industrial, Land use, carbon cycle; carbon dioxide; carbon emission; deforestation; disturbance; fossil fuel; land use |
| Department/Centre: | Division of Mechanical Sciences > Centre for Atmospheric & Oceanic Sciences |
| Date Deposited: | 21 Jun 2022 10:05 |
| Last Modified: | 21 Jun 2022 10:05 |
| URI: | https://eprints.iisc.ac.in/id/eprint/73932 |
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