B42B-08
Impacts of thermal acclimation of photosynthesis on future land carbon storage
Thursday, 17 December 2015: 12:05
2008 (Moscone West)
Lina M Mercado1, Belinda E Medlyn2, Chris Huntingford3, Stephen Sitch1, Przemyslaw Zelazowsk4 and Peter Michael Cox1, (1)University of Exeter, Exeter, United Kingdom, (2)Western Sydney University, Hawkesbury Institute for the Environment, Sydney, Australia, (3)Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, Wallingford, United Kingdom, (4)University of Warsaw, Centre of New Technologies, Warsaw, Poland
Abstract:
Plants have the ability to adjust their photosynthetic characteristics in order to improve their performance at the prevailing thermal regimes, this is termed thermal acclimation of photosynthesis. The impacts of thermal acclimation of photosynthesis on future land sink and climate is unknown. In this study we estimate the impact of accounting for thermal acclimation of photosynthetic traits on future land carbon sink using 22 climate models and a global land surface model. We find an enhancement of land carbon storage of up to 70 % and 13 % in tropical and temperate regions in 2100 when accounting for thermal plasticity of photosynthetic capacity. The outcome of this study highlights the urgent need for more studies on thermal acclimation of photosynthesis, specifically in the tropical regions where there is a lack of data and ecosystem scale warming and elevated CO2 experiments.
