Global cooling induced by biophysical effects of bioenergy crop cultivation

Wang, J., Li, W., Ciais, P., Li, L.Z.X., Chang, J., Goll, D., Gasser, T. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4882-2647, Huang, X., Devaraju, N., & Boucher, O. (2021). Global cooling induced by biophysical effects of bioenergy crop cultivation. Nature Communications 12 (1) e7255. 10.1038/s41467-021-27520-0.

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Abstract

Bioenergy crop with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) is a key negative emission technology to meet carbon neutrality. However, the biophysical effects of widespread bioenergy crop cultivation on temperature remain unclear. Here, using a coupled atmosphere-land model with an explicit representation of lignocellulosic bioenergy crops, we find that after 50 years of large-scale bioenergy crop cultivation following plausible scenarios, global air temperature decreases by 0.03~0.08 °C, with strong regional contrasts and interannual variability. Over the cultivated regions, woody crops induce stronger cooling effects than herbaceous crops due to larger evapotranspiration rates and smaller aerodynamic resistance. At the continental scale, air temperature changes are not linearly proportional to the cultivation area. Sensitivity tests show that the temperature change is robust for eucalypt but more uncertain for switchgrass among different cultivation maps. Our study calls for new metrics to take the biophysical effects into account when assessing the climate mitigation capacity of BECCS.

Item Type:	Article
Research Programs:	Advancing Systems Analysis (ASA) Advancing Systems Analysis (ASA) > Exploratory Modeling of Human-natural Systems (EM) Energy, Climate, and Environment (ECE) Energy, Climate, and Environment (ECE) > Integrated Assessment and Climate Change (IACC)
Depositing User:	Luke Kirwan
Date Deposited:	15 Dec 2021 13:01
Last Modified:	09 Sep 2024 12:43
URI:	https://pure.iiasa.ac.at/17709

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