Resolving Uncertainty in the Response of Australia's Terrestrial Carbon Cycle to Projected Climate Change

Abstract

Semi-arid ecosystems, common across the Australian continent, strongly influence the inter-annual variability and trend in the global terrestrial net carbon sink. Here we explore the future Australian terrestrial carbon cycle using the CMIP6 ensemble, and the dynamic global vegetation model LPJ-GUESS. Uncertainty in Australia's carbon storage in vegetation ranged between 6 and 49 PgC at the end of the century and was strongly linked to biases in the meteorological forcing. Using LPJ-GUESS with bias-corrected meteorological forcing reduced uncertainty in the vegetation carbon storage to between 14 and 20 PgC, with the remaining range linked to model sensitivities to rising atmospheric CO₂ concentration, temperature, and precipitation variability. Reducing this uncertainty will require improved terrestrial biosphere models, but also major improvements in the simulation of regional precipitation by Global Climate Models.