Date: Thursday, December 1, 2011

Time: 12:00 to 1:00pm

Place: Mesa Lab: Chapman Room (245)

Speaker: Johan Lindström from the Mathematical Statistics, Centre for Mathematical Sciences at Lund University

Abstract: 

A common method for comparing the result of different global circulation models (GCMs) under different emission scenarios is to study global climate response variables, such as mean temperature. An interesting alternative measure of climate sensitivity is to study the biosphere's response to the different climate scenarios. The Lund-Postdam-Jena (LPJ) global vegetation model and its extension LPJ-GUESS is a dynamic global vegetation model that can be coupled to GCMs and used to explore the effect of varying climates on vegetation and carbon uptake. Using the output from different GCMs under different emission scenarios LPJ-GUESS can be used to generate global vegetation and carbon uptake patterns that are specific to each forcing climate scenario. We investigate if important regional and global differences exist between the vegetation patterns from different GCMs and emission scenarios. An important question is if potential differences are primarily due to the different emission scenarios or to the different GCMs.