PCIC science brief: On the promise of biomass and biosphere-climate interactions
Date
2015-04
Authors
Pacific Climate Impacts Consortium (PCIC)
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Pacific Climate Impacts Consortium (PCIC)
Abstract
Two articles recently published in the peer-review literature seek to answer two related questions: What role could utilizing vegetation burning for energy, with methods to capture the carbon dioxide emitted, have in aggressive short-term climate mitigation in western North America? And, how might North American vegetation and its interactions with the climate change in the future?
Addressing the first question in Nature Climate Change, Sanchez et al. (2015) find that western North America could attain a carbon-negative power system by 2050 through strong deployment of renewable energy sources, including BioEnergy with Carbon Capture and Storage (BECCS), and fossil fuel reductions. Their results indicate that reductions of up to 145% from 1990s emissions are possible. They also find that the primary value of BECCS is not electricity production, but carbon sequestration, and note that BECCS can also be used to reduce emissions in the transportation and industrial sectors.
Publishing in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres, Garnaud and Sushama (2015) examine the second question. In order to do this they downscale output from a global climate model using a regional climate model that can simulate vegetation dynamics. They find that the projected future increases to growing season length result in greater vegetation productivity and biomass, though this plateaus at the end of of the 21st century. Their projections also indicate an increase in the water-use efficiency of plants, but decreased plant productivity in the southeastern US over the 2071-2100 period. In addition, they find that accounting for vegetation feedbacks leads to increased warming in summer at higher latitudes and a reduction in summer warming at lower latitudes.
Description
Keywords
UN SDG 13: Climate Action, #science brief, Pacific Climate Impacts Consortium (PCIC)