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Paul Miller. Photo.

Paul Miller

Senior lecturer

Paul Miller. Photo.

Air temperature and precipitation constraining the modelled wetland methane emissions in a boreal region in northern Europe

Author

  • Tuula Aalto
  • Jarmo Mäkelä
  • Jurek Müller
  • Maria Tenkanen
  • Eleanor Burke
  • Sarah E. Chadburn
  • Yao Gao
  • Vilma Mannisenaho
  • Thomas Kleinen
  • Hanna Lee
  • Antti Leppänen
  • Tiina Markkanen
  • Stefano Materia
  • Paul Miller
  • Daniele Peano
  • Olli Peltola
  • Benjamin Poulter
  • Maarit Raivonen
  • Marielle Saunois
  • David Wårlind
  • Sönke Zaehle
Show all

Summary, in English

Wetland methane responses to temperature and precipitation are studied in a boreal wetland-rich region in northern Europe using ecosystem process models. Six ecosystem models (JSBACH-HIMMELI, LPX-Bern, LPJ-GUESS, JULES, CLM4.5, and CLM5) are compared to multi-model means of ecosystem models and atmospheric inversions from the Global Carbon Project and upscaled eddy covariance flux results for their temperature and precipitation responses and seasonal cycles of the regional fluxes. Two models with contrasting response patterns, LPX-Bern and JSBACH-HIMMELI, are used as priors in atmospheric inversions with Carbon Tracker Europe–CH4 (CTE-CH4) in order to find out how the assimilation of atmospheric concentration data changes the flux estimates and how this alters the interpretation of the flux responses to temperature and precipitation. Inversion moves wetland emissions of both models towards co-limitation by temperature and precipitation. Between 2000 and 2018, periods of high temperature and/or high precipitation often resulted in increased emissions. However, the dry summer of 2018 did not result in increased emissions despite the high temperatures. The process models show strong temperature and strong precipitation responses for the region (51 %–91 % of the variance explained by both). The month with the highest emissions varies from May to September among the models. However, multi-model means, inversions, and upscaled eddy covariance flux observations agree on the month of maximum emissions and are co-limited by temperature and precipitation. The setup of different emission components (peatland emissions, mineral land fluxes) has an important role in building up the response patterns. Considering the significant differences among the models, it is essential to pay more attention to the regional representation of wet and dry mineral soils and periodic flooding which contribute to the seasonality and magnitude of methane fluxes. The realistic representation of temperature dependence of the peat soil fluxes is also important. Furthermore, it is important to use process-based descriptions for both mineral and peat soil fluxes to simulate the flux responses to climate drivers.

Department/s

  • LU Profile Area: Nature-based future solutions
  • eSSENCE: The e-Science Collaboration
  • Centre for Environmental and Climate Science (CEC)
  • Dept of Physical Geography and Ecosystem Science
  • BECC: Biodiversity and Ecosystem services in a Changing Climate
  • MERGE: ModElling the Regional and Global Earth system

Publishing year

2025-01-16

Language

English

Pages

323-340

Publication/Series

Biogeosciences

Volume

22

Document type

Journal article

Publisher

Copernicus GmbH

Topic

  • Climate Science

Status

Published

ISBN/ISSN/Other

  • ISSN: 1726-4189