vulnerabilitiesoftheglobalcarboncycleinthe21st century（vulnerabilitiesoftheglobalcarboncycleinthe21st世纪）.docVIP

Vulnerabilities of the Global Carbon Cycle in the 21st Century GCP Activity – Overview and Progress 23 August 2006 Prepared by Pep Canadell, Chris Field, Corinne Lequere, Nebojsa, Nakicenovic, Mike Raupach Problem Statement Earth system processes that cause carbon loss to the atmosphere could greatly accelerate climate change during this century. Potentially vulnerable carbon pools that currently contain hundreds of billion tons of carbon could be destabilized through global warming and land use change. Some of the most vulnerable pools on land and oceans are: soil carbon in permafrost, soil carbon in high- and low-latitude wetlands, biomass-carbon in forests (trees and soils), methane hydrates in the coastal shelfs, and ocean carbon concentrated by the biological pump (Fig. 1). Preliminary analyses indicate a risk over the coming century that may be larger than 200 ppm of atmospheric CO2, rivalling the expected release from fossil fuel combustion (Gruber et al. 2004). Such a massive release of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere would result in higher concentrations of atmospheric CO2, accelerating climate warming, and potentially stimulating even greater losses of carbon from vulnerable pools. The risk of large losses from these pools is not well known, and is not included in most climate simulations. Figure 1. Magnitude and Vulnerability of C pools on land and oceans (SCOPE-GCP synthesis: Gruber et al. 2004). At present, there is no comprehensive analysis of the size of vulnerable pools on land and in the oceans, and their potential dynamics during this century; nor is there an assessment of their possible collective feedbacks to climate change. Furthermore, some of the pools could be managed through human responses to local and regional impacts which in turn have a negative feedback on global emissions. Little research has been undertaken in linking these various dynamics operating at different scales and for different purposes to p