Sea surface temperature warming patterns and future vegetation change

Taken together with observational evidence of increasing tree mortality in numerous ecosystem types, there is clearly a need for projections of vegetation change. To that end, the authors have performed an ensemble of climate-vegetation experiments with the National Science Foundation-DOE Community Atmosphere Model (CAM) coupled to the Community Land Model (CAM-CLM-CN) with its dynamic vegetation model enabled (CAM-CLM-CNDV).

To overcome the limitations of using a single model, the authors employ the sea surface temperature (SST) warming patterns simulated by eight different models from the Coupled Model Intercomparison Program phase 3 (CMIP3) as boundary conditions. Since the SST warming pattern in part dictates how precipitation may change in the future, in this way a range of future vegetation-climate trajectories can be produced. On an annual average basis, this study's CAM-CLM-CN simulations do not produce as large a spread in projected precipitation as the original CMIP3 archive.