Carbon dioxide induced stomatal closure increases radiative forcing of climate via a rapid reduction in low cloud

Doutriaux-Boucher, M., Webb, M. J., Gregory, J. M. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1296-8644 and Boucher, O. (2009) Carbon dioxide induced stomatal closure increases radiative forcing of climate via a rapid reduction in low cloud. Geophysical Research Letters, 36. L02703. ISSN 0094-8276 doi: 10.1029/2008GL036273

Abstract/Summary

We performed an ensemble of twelve five-year experiments using a coupled climate-carbon-cycle model with scenarios of prescribed atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration; CO2 was instantaneously doubled or quadrupled at the start of the experiments. Within these five years, climate feedback is not significantly influenced by the effects of climate change on the carbon system. However, rapid changes take place, within much less than a year, due to the physiological effect of CO2 on plant stomatal conductance, leading to adjustment in the shortwave cloud radiative effect over land, due to a reduction in low cloud cover. This causes a 10% enhancement to the radiative forcing due to CO2, which leads to an increase in the equilibrium warming of 0.4 and 0.7 K for doubling and quadrupling. The implications for calibration of energy-balance models are discussed.

Item Type	Article
URI	https://reading-clone.eprints-hosting.org/id/eprint/4333
Item Type	Article
Refereed	Yes
Divisions	Science > School of Mathematical, Physical and Computational Sciences > NCAS Science > School of Mathematical, Physical and Computational Sciences > Department of Meteorology
Publisher	American Geophysical Union
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