LPJ-GUESS Peatland
Abstract
The recent changes in climate and land-use patterns have disturbed the Earth's climate-carbon cycle equilibrium. These changes trigger potentially important land-surface feedbacks, which will further modify the Earth's climate. The ongoing changes in peatland carbon balance as a result of climate warming have the potential to strong positive and negative feedbacks to climate, but these impacts are poorly constrained. To assess the importance of these feedbacks, the interactions between the peatland carbon cycle and climate should be taken into account. However, the absence of peatlands in current Earth system models limits our understanding of the peatland-mediated feedbacks at different scales. My peatland model showed a reasonable demonstration of capturing the right carbon accumulation rates and permafrost dynamics at different spatial and temporal scales and will be further improved and employed to quantify the peatland-mediated feedbacks when coupled with a regional climate model. The results of model simulations will increase our understanding of land-surface interactions and their impacts on climate and the carbon cycle. This project will be carried out at Lund University from 2020-2022.
