University of Wisconsin - Madison
Impact of future greenhouse effect on global vegetation and climate
We use the fully coupled atmosphere-ocean-land model, FOAM-LPJ, to predict future changes
in global vegetation and climate due to continued rising
levels of carbon dioxide (CO2). In these simulations, we allow CO2 to transiently
increase 1% per year until reaching 4xCO2. We perform separate
simulations to investigate the radiative (increased CO2 in the atmosphere leads
to higher temperatures) and physiological (increased CO2 in plants leads to greater
photosynthesis) effects of rising CO2 and to compare simulations with interactive and fixed
vegetation cover. The model predicts that in the future, tropical rainforests will suffer due to higher
temperatures and reduced rainfall while the boreal forests will continue to shift poleward. The
model simulates a substantial heat stress on the boreal forest, which causes a vast loss of trees
along the southern portions of the modern boreal forest, although the likelihood of this vegetation
response remains uncertain. Vegetation feedbacks on the atmosphere are not substantial on a
global average but produce important regional effects, such as a reduced
warming trend over the areas of boreal tree loss in Eurasia.
(a) Modern and (b) future (4xCO2) biome distribution as simulated by FOAM-LPJ.
http://ccr.aos.wisc.edu/research/veg-climate/impact-of-future-greenhouse.php