Global and regional impacts of climate change on vegetation resilience estimated by a new ensemble of Earth System Models

Abstract:

Climate change affects natural ecosystems and society. Anticipating the projected changes of vegetation resilience – the plant capacity to absorb disturbances and shocks including those related to climate extremes – is critical to support mitigation actions and to define proper adaptation plans. Here, we take advantage from state-of-the-art Earth System Model (ESM) simulations included in the newest Sixth Phase of Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP6) in order to quantify the changes of vegetation gross primary production resilience for different periods in the near and far future (2021-2050 and 2051-2100) under three scenarios. In the lower emission scenarios considered here (ssp126 and ssp245), the areas where vegetation shows increasing gross primary production resilience (mainly boreal, African and Indian monsoonal regions) are wider than the areas with decreasing resilience. The situation drastically reverses in the high emission scenario (ssp585), mostly because the increase of gross primary production interannual variability outbalances the mean increase due to the CO2 fertilization effect. Among the larger countries, Brazil is exposed to the highest risk of losing vegetation primary production resilience, especially in the higher emission scenario, even without considering the direct effects of deforestation and land-use changes on vegetation productivity.