Analysing the response of European ecosystems to droughts and heat waves within ISI-MIP2 simulations.

Abstract:

With unprecedented speed and extent, the future climate change can be expected to severely impact terrestrial ecosystems due to more frequent extreme events, such as droughts or heat waves. What will be the impacts of these extreme events on ecosystem functioning and structure? How far will net primary production be reduced by such events? What will be the impact on plant mortality? Could such events trigger changes in the abundance of plant species, thus leading to biome shifts?

In this contribution, we propose to use ISI-MIP2 model historical simulations from the biome sector to analyse the response of ecosystems to droughts or heat waves, trying to understand the differences between several vegetation models (e.g. CARAIB, HYBRID, LPJ). The analysis will focus on Europe. It will compare and assess the model responses for a series of well-marked drought or heat wave events in the simulated historical period, such as those that occurred in 1976, 2003 or 2010. This analysis will be performed in terms of several important environmental variables, like soil water and hydric stress, runoff, PFT abundance, net primary productivity and biomass, fire frequency, turnover of soil organic matter, etc. Whenever possible, the response of the model will be compared to available data for the most recent well-marked events. Examples of data to be used are eddy covariance, satellite data (including leaf area and fire occurrence) or tree rings.