Tropical nighttime warming as a dominant driver of variability in the terrestrial carbon sink.

The terrestrial biosphere is currently a strong carbon (C) sink but may switch to a source in the 21st century as climate-driven losses exceed CO2-driven C gains, thereby accelerating global warming. Although it has long been recognized that tropical climate plays a critical role in regulating interannual climate variability, the causal link between changes in temperature and precipitation and terrestrial processes remains uncertain. Here, we combine atmospheric mass balance, remote sensing-modeled datasets of vegetation C uptake, and climate datasets to characterize the temporal variability of the terrestrial C sink and determine the dominant climate drivers of this variability. We show that the interannual variability of global land C sink has grown by 50-100% over the past 50 y. We further find that interannual land C sink variability is most strongly linked to tropical nighttime warming, likely through respiration. This apparent sensitivity of respiration to nighttime temperatures, which are projected to increase faster than global average temperatures, suggests that C stored in tropical forests may be vulnerable to future warming.

An observing system simulation for Southern Ocean carbon dioxide uptake.

The Southern Ocean is critically important to the oceanic uptake of anthropogenic CO2. Up to half of the excess CO2 currently in the ocean entered through the Southern Ocean. That uptake helps to maintain the global carbon balance and buffers transient climate change from fossil fuel emissions. However, the future evolution of the uptake is uncertain, because our understanding of the dynamics that govern the Southern Ocean CO2 uptake is incomplete. Sparse observations and incomplete model formulations limit our ability to constrain the monthly and annual uptake, interannual variability and long-term trends. Float-based sampling of ocean biogeochemistry provides an opportunity for transforming our understanding of the Southern Ocean CO2 flux. In this work, we review current estimates of the CO2 uptake in the Southern Ocean and projections of its response to climate change. We then show, via an observational system simulation experiment, that float-based sampling provides a significant opportunity for measuring the mean fluxes and monitoring the mean uptake over decadal scales.